If I had to summarize my collective thoughts on
the score to Men In Black to one phrase it would have to be, "sci-fi
Mission: Impossible." Every time I listen to this
score, I feel like I’m listening to an inferior, more exotic version of that score.
Even the main theme is really not all that great. I prefer the main title from
Elfman’s previous sci-fi score, Mars Attacks! over the M.I.B. one.
Bland is probably not the adjective that comes to mind when people think of Danny Elfman,
but that is how I feel about this score. It does have some good moments here and there,
but those moments are very scarce.
One thing that really annoyed me about this score was whacked out action
music. Take the zaniest action cue from Mission: Impossible,
multiply it’s jerkiness by a factor of ten, and then toss it in a blender for five
minutes and you have the action music for this score. Track two stops dead in its tracks
after the opening blasts of the trumpets signaling a call to the action, because from
there on out it just gets so disjointed and pointless that it’s a real pain. Things
do get better near the end, most notably in track fourteen, mostly because Elfman seems to
have had some fun parodying some of his previous scores (like Batman).
The biggest trouble with Elfman is that you want to like his work,
mostly because he’s done some incredible scores in the past like Batman
and Edward Scissorhands. I didn’t think Mission: Impossible was all that bad, either. However, Men
In Black, is just a total failure in my opinion. I couldn’t recommend this to
anyone at all unless they were a true die-hard Elfman fan and couldn’t be convinced
to leave it be. For the rest of us though, it should stay on the shelf. **
