How does one criticize John Williams? After all, he
is the acknowledged master of the film score, having
credits like Superman, Star Wars, and a whole host of
Steven Spielberg movies to his name. Besides, his
soundtrack to "AI: Artificial Intelligence," is
generally solid. "The Mecha World," gets the album off
to a great start with a minimalistic urgency. The
sweeping arpeggios of, "Abandoned in the Woods," bring
home a sense of mystery and danger. Later on, "The
Moon Rising" sucks you in, and takes you for an
adventurous ride, which includes a side trip through
some techno territory.
The standout track on the disc might be "Stored
Memories" and "Monica's Theme." The first part is pure
mood music, woodwinds providing the base over which
flutes play, and through booming bass notes intrude on
occasion. That gives way to the beautiful cello and
piano-based, "Monica's Theme," the best five minutes
on the soundtrack.
If there's anything to say about Williams, it goes
back to his penchant for borrowing liberally from the
work of other composers. The dissonance found in
portions of "Replicas" is reminiscent of that used by
Aaron Copeland. The beginning of "Cybertronics"
resembles the "Gayane Ballet Suite" from the
soundtrack of "2001." But frankly, that's about it for
the negatives about his work. It's too bad that his
work wasn't the only factor that went into the making
of this soundtrack.
For one thing, the tracks on this album do not
appear in the same order they did in the film, robbing
the listener of the feeling of progressing through the
movie as the CD advances. More egregiously, the
choices made as to what music to include and what
songs to leave out were nothing short of disastrous.
The best piece of music that actually appears in the
movie, "Ministry's", "What About Us?" (from the Flesh
Fair sequence) doesn't appear on the soundtrack.
Worse, the best bit of music that is used, "Monica's
Theme," is overused and abused to the point of nausea.
As I said before, "Monica's Theme" on piano and cello
is gorgeous. The version with wordless vocalizations,
entitled, "Where Dreams are Born," isn't too bad. The
lyricized take with Lara Fabian on vocals which
didn't even appear in the movie gets annoying (on
the scale of Celine Dion) very quickly. The duet
version also never heard in "AI" with Fabian
joined by Josh Groban to provide a male counterpoint,
is severe overkill. After all these multiple pop-chart
ready versions placed on the soundtrack for little
apparent purpose beyond boosting album sales, the
brilliant simplicity of the original theme is lost. I
suppose I could make a point about commercialization
at the expense of art, but it's been done before.
Bottom line, John Williams did his part at giving
this soundtrack a chance to succeed, delivering a
solid film score. Unfortunately, whoever was in charge
of putting this soundtrack together at Warner Brothers
screwed up royally.
