Hooked

For reasons I don't really understand, the critics took their claws out and savaged Steven Spielberg's "Peter Pan grew up" film, Hook. But one aspect of the film that no one seems to criticize is the score by John Williams. In fact, there are many soundtrack enthusiasts who regard his work on the film as among his career best.

For years, the lack of popularity of the film kept the soundtrack to Hook a somewhat harder to find item. And even if you could find it, it was a far from complete album. The CD wasn't close to full, more than half the film's music was missing, and several tracks were presented in "concert versions" that didn't match what was used on screen. And so, among those soundtrack enthusiasts, Hook became something of a white whale to chase -- a dream that some day, one of the smaller companies that produces expanded soundtrack albums would bestow the honor on Hook.

Earlier this year, La-La Land Records came to the rescue, releasing a 2-CD album of the Hook soundtrack. And as I've raved about the company's releases several times here on the blog, it should come as no surprise that they've done a wonderful job here. The complete score, well over one hour of music, sprawls over a full disc and then some, while the last half of the second disc collects alternate takes, including some of those aforementioned "concert versions" of tracks as featured on the original soundtrack album.

You get absolutely everything, from the rousing and adventurous theme composed exclusively for the movie's teaser trailer (and never actually used in the film), to the oddly different (but awesome) jazz group number "Banning Back Home," to the three part suite for the film's climax, "The Ultimate War." And everything in between -- the brassy and brazen theme for Captain Hook; the child-like innocence of Peter's theme, the unrestrained and flighty flute of Tinkerbell's theme, and more. You even get the weird vocal number from the film, "When You're Alone," which the liner notes of the release helpfully explain is a vestige in the film left over from a time when Spielberg was contemplating making the entire film a musical in a bit of a nod to the Disney incarnation.

The collection is 37 tracks in all, and while I might not go so far as to really call it a Williams career best -- I mean, look at some of the film's in that man's illustrious career -- it is certainly a soundtrack that no enthusiast of the composer, or of film music in general, should be without. There are quite a lot of quiet, backing tracks that pull my overall rating of the soundtrack down into the B range somewhere, but the highlights of album soar to lofty As, and should really be the driving force behind the decision to purchase it or not.