A review by JAMES SOUTHALL

James Newton Howard's rise to the top of the film music tree seemed to come a little bit out of nowhere: while he had written a few decent scores for films which didn't do anything, and write rather forgettable scores for several films which did a lot, there had never really been anything in his music to suggest that he would get quite so many fans as he did, not only amongst the film music crowd, but far more importantly within Hollywood itself.  While the film isn't well-remembered today, perhaps Dinosaur was the real announcement that he had arrived at the top - the first of a three-score deal with Disney, it was a brave attempt by the studio to do something many people had been asking them to do for a long time, but they hadn't - make a straight, dramatic animated film - not a musical.  While he had written several scores of note beforehand - Wyatt Earp chief amongst them, and perhaps it's still his best; and The Sixth Sense, which didn't have much impact in the inexplicably successful film but which worked very well outside it - Dinosaur saw him straying into territory reserved for A-listers, and not looking at all out of place there.

The music is in turns sweeping, bold and majestic, conjuring up images of vast, teeming African plains (clearly the dinosaurs in the film come from Africa!); the problem is that if you were to take various scores by Jerry Goldsmith (specifically Baby, Congo and especially The Ghost and the Darkness), feed them into a computer program, tell it to select the highlights, then this is what you would get.  It pushes all the right buttons but sounds somehow sanitised, and so frequently resembles Goldsmith it's difficult to believe he didn't write it.  Easily the best cue is "The Egg Travels", which had film music fans in raptures (or should that be raptors?) when it was used in the trailer. It introduces the African choral music for the first time - it's straight out of The Ghost and the Darkness, but the big theme is Howard's own, and it's an impressive one to boot.

Elsewhere, it is in the action music that Howard really comes into his own: a criticism I would make of some of Howard's score is the less-than-imaginative orchestrations, always sounding far too standard to make the albums all that interesting to hear, but for Dinosaur he seems to have very definitely pulled out all the stops.  "Raptors / Stand Together" is a prime example for that, with rapid percussion and a jagged five-note theme.  Likewise, "The End of Our Island" is a very well-constructed cue, and shows that when he puts his mind to it, Howard is more than capable of exerting his own musical voice.  The same goes for "The Cave", a track with considerable replay value. "Epilogue" reprises the egg-traveling from the beginning of the album, and ends the album -which is perfect in length, by the way- in a rousing finale.  Dinosaur is an excellent score and, if you aren't expecting to find a particularly original voice at work, you're unlikely to be disappointed.  It is a very broad work which shows Howard at his best and comes highly recommended.

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Tracks

1. Inner Sanctum / The Nesting Grounds (2:58)
2. The Egg Travels (2:45)
3. Aladar and Neera (3:29)
4. The Courtship (4:13)
5. The End of our Island (3:59)
6. They're All Gone (2:08)
7. Raptors / Stand Together (5:37)
8. Across the Desert (2:26)
9. Finding Water (4:14)
10. The Cave (3:40)
11. The Carnotaur Attack (3:53)
12. Neera Rescues the Orphans (1:12)
13. Breakout (3:43)
14. It Comes with a Pool (3:01)
15. Kron and Aladar Fight (2:58)
16. Epilogue (2:30)