Danny Elfman - Charlie & The Chocolate Factory
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Free Music Notes for Charlie & The Chocolate Factory
Free Music Review: Great Soundrtrack of the Family
Hit: 5 Stars
Our family has really enjoyed this CD as well as the movie. Danny Elfman does a great job again with his scoring of this rendition of a family classic.Free Music Review: Love it
Hit: 5 Stars
I saw the movie and loved the soundtrack so I decided to purchase it. I actually listen to it in my car on the way home from work and it's amazing how such funny songs can lift me.Free Music Review: Chocolate Explorers
Hit: 4 Stars
-A Tim Burton movie without a Danny Elfman score would be like a Jerry Bruckheimer movie without a Media Venture *or Remote Control* score. They just go together so beautifully that you'd think it was their destiny to be together. Elfman uses a lot of his patent techniques with the movie and he uses them well to create a very well done score to a very well made movie.
-The album starts of with the songs, but I don't care for them so I don't really waste time on it. After those we get into the score and things start off with the Main Titles. Elfman is the best in the business when it comes to Main Titles but the one here isn't his best. It changes tempos far too often and just feels all over the place. One second it's sweet and heartwarming, the next it's fast and loud. The next couple of tracks are classic Elfman magic that makes you wonder how the red headed composer is able to write music so good it does things to you when you listen to it.
-My personal favorites are "Golden Ticket/Factory", "Chocolate Explorers", "The Boat Arrives", "River Cruise" and off course the highlight of the album, "River Cruise Pt. 2". The other tracks are great but those are the ones that I can't live without.
-When it comes to songs Elfman knows how to write great ones as he has proven before in the past, unfortunately the songs here aren't exactly his best. Apart from "Veruca Salt" there was never really any song that I really liked. It was just a little too weird and off putting for me to fully get into. The reason why he used the weird little kazoo like voices was because the oompa loompas are small which works great in theory, but it comes off kinda of annoying in the movie.
-For me the best part of an album is the unused or alternate tracks. In this we get the fantastic "River Cruise Pt. 2". I don't know why it didn't make it in the movie, but my guess is editing changes at the last second. It's a shame because it's my favorite piece of music on the whole album. The choir that comes in at the 19 second mark and the high string that Elfman throws in and out is a great pleasure to listen to. Don't know why it didn't make it into the movie, but I'm guessing it had something to do with editing changes at the last minute
-It's not Elfman's strongest outing, but it's a very enjoyable one that was truly one of the best of 2005.
Free Music Review: finally, they get it!!!
Hit: 5 Stars
finally a soundtrack w the exact music from the movie. imagine that! i am so sick of soundtracks that either change the music (polar express) or leave it off (anastasia). movie companies just do not seem to get that if someone buys the soundtrack it is because they want the music from the movie.
Free Music Review: Unbelievable underscore; but undercooked, unmelodic, unmemorable songs
Hit: 3 Stars
For me, Danny Elfman is among the most brilliant film composers of all time, so it disappointed me that the songs written for this film just couldn't in fairness be said to be good.
One of Elfman's signature moves as a composer is his sparkling ability to shatter the monolithic score into all manner of little skittering shards of runs, switches of time signature or key, etc. He's extremely agile and light on his feet, with a kind of restless energy that seems impossible to satisfy with anything straightahead for more than a few seconds at a time.
That's often great for a score, but it can be ruinous for a song, depending on how strong the theme is and how well established it becomes and thus able to be broken apart with bursts of novelty without the audience losing comprehension of the song that can also go by the names "hooky," "catchy," "hummable," or "memorable". These aren't catchy songs, and have so little catchy material inside them that they're difficult to even remember afterward.
On the other hand that may be beside the point for this film and reflect Elfman's willing subservience to the glorious inventive Busby Berkeley production numbers Burton creates. It's not too hard to recall crazy production-number songs filled with funny changes in other films that nonetheless stayed lodged in one's head for days. I don't see how catchy songs could have hurt, but we don't know what kind of notes he was given by Burton. The melodies are often at around the elementary level of the chorus of Oingo Boingo's "Dead Man's Party" -- perhaps the intent was to conjure oompa-loompaness. Maybe given more time he'd have found a better way. Film composer's deadlines are beyond brutal.
At any rate, they're not particularly listenable songs. Regarding the rest of the score, bravo.