This is a review of the motion picture score for Nim’s Island by Patrick Doyle.

Adventure movies have so far been a hit and miss affair for Patrick Doyle. I didn’t care for his Eragon score too much, but I really enjoyed his Harry Potter score The Goblet of Fire. This time, it’s perhaps meant for a younger audience, but it’s still an adventure movie. Patrick Doyle, who is Scottish by the way, is a relatively new composer who scored for his first movie in 1989. This is the track list of Nim’s Island:

1. Nim’s Island
2. Baby Turtles
3. Galileo Helps Jack
4. Volcano & Door
5. Buccaneer Ship
6. Become The Hero
7. The Great Outdoors
8. Airport, Whale
9. Lizard Attack
10. Volcano Erupts
11. Helicopter Storm
12. Woman Overboard
13. Alex Nearly Drowns
14. Alex Swims Away
15. It’s Empty
16. Nim Sees Jack

16 tracks with a total play time of 53:38. I had it in my head what this score would sound like before I had it. It’s always like that with me. Of course sometimes my expectations are not met and sometimes it exceeds my expectations. I was thinking a light, uplifting, high tempo score with lots of ups and downs. Instead I got a slow, consistent score, although light and uplifting. It starts of with a nice theme, a very nice theme I thought, although it reminded me of Dreamer by John Debney, at least in the beginning.

There are very little highs in this score, it kind of reminds me of The Golden Compass by Alexandre Desplat in a way. It is also a little bit more “childish”, but that’s probably because of the nature of the movie. It has some horns and “action” sequences as well, but it’s like a kitten… not as powerful as his work on Harry Potter for example. To tell you the truth, it feels a little disappointing listening to this score who I thought would be a little more powerful and a little more upbeat. The problem here could be the movie itself, perhaps Patrick Doyle didn’t have much choice because of the nature of it. At times it sounds like an animated score, like one you would expect for a decent Pixar production. I have to say that I feel disappointed by Patrick Doyle’s effort here. There are a lot of good, even great fantasy scores out there, but this score isn’t a part of those. Listen to Nim’s Island by Patrick Doyle below:

[tags]soundtrack review, movie score review, film music, movie music, film score, movie score, soundtrack, nims island, patrick doyle, alexandre desplat, the golden compass, eragon, dreamer, john dobney, harry potter, goblet of fire[/tags]

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