INTRADA Announces:
HONEY, I SHRUNK THE KIDS
Music Composed and Conducted by JAMES HORNER
INTRADA Special Collection Volume 94
The 1989 Walt Disney film Honey, I Shrunk the Kids remains one of the most successful efforts to bring the classic Walt Disney brand of family adventure with humor, high-class production values and dazzling special effects, to modern audiences and modern sensibilities. Amateur scientist Wayne Szalinski (Rick Moranis) is in the midst of testing his shrinking machine, but can't quite get it to work. When a baseball accidentally gets lodged in the machine and activates the shrinking machine, the Szalinski kids and the next door neighbor's kids are reduced to a quarter of an inch in size and swept out into the garbage at the far end of the backyard. Trapped in a fantastic alien environment, the kids must stay alive and fight their way across the lawn while Wayne becomes aware of the problem and launches a desperate search for the children.
For this premiere release of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, Simon Rhodes and James Horner produced a sparkling CD for Intrada from the original multi-track elements stored at Disney. Horner’s main title music is a nod to Raymond Scott’s 1937 “Powerhouse B” tune, often referenced in Carl Stalling’s Warner Bros. cartoon scores and a perfect accompaniment for the Rube Goldberg style contraptions of Wayne Szalinski. With a bright four-note motif for harp and plucked strings and jazzy accompaniment for saxophone suggestive of Nino Rota, as well as brash accents from brass and electric organ, Horner’s main title music underscores all the major moments involving Szalinski’s technology. With the main title tune covering most of the film’s comic moments, Horner was free to use straight dramatic scoring to address the bizarre miniature landscapes in which the four young heroes find themselves, with numerous evocative moments that utilize his trademark ethereal orchestrations, heretofore often employed to illustrate the vastness of space in scores like Aliens and Cocoon. Horner uses a warm long-line melody, often played by flutes of various kinds, for the relationships between the film’s young heroes and their growing bond both among themselves and, as the film moves on, with their environment. He also provides a playful theme first heard in “Ant Rodeo” as the children voraciously attack a giant cookie. This is developed in the Coplandesque material Horner wrote for the children riding the ant and is very subtly suggested during the otherwise violent and menacing music for the scorpion attack that the ant repulses, where he uses brushed low piano strings, snare and side drums, menacing horns and coiling low strings to underscore the assault by a blood red scorpion on the children’s nighttime Lego shelter, with heroic fanfares accompanying their ant companion’s counterattack and a delicate string elegy as the ant dies. It all ties together into a musical adventure as exciting and colorful as the film itself, and is a true gem from Disney's orchestral film music legacy.
This release is limited to 3000 copies.
INTRADA Special Collection - Volume 94
Retail Price: 19.99
AVAILABLE NOW
For track listing and sound samples, please visit
http://store.intrada.com/s.nl/it.A/id.6098/.f
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