By Alexandre Desplat

Netflix, out now

A different take on Pinocchio…

Desplat is a longtime soundtrack composer with plenty of experience in a wide variety of genres, from Syriana via The Golden Compass to Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows by way of many other animated films, such as Ratatouille and both Secret Life Of Pets movies. All of which makes him a solid choice for something like this: an animated retelling of Pinocchio by master of the fantastical.

It’s mostly generally light; not too dark and moody, not too action-frenetic, no screechy shrieks to make the listener jump out of their earphones. Rather it has a tone period adventure with occasional forays into darker political undertones – especially with track titles like “Il Duce” and “Marching For The Fatherland”. In other words, it sounds like something to fit a telling of Grimms’ fairy tales, which, remember, were often collected under the occupation of France by Napoleonic troops.

These truths are reflected here by the early use of glockenspiel sounds. Likewise Pinocchio’s themes, especially in “Big Lies”, are wrought with woodwinds, reflecting his nature.

It’s a fairly solid score in this respect, giving a palpable sense of period setting, and the orchestra gives a full range of tones and styles for Pinocchio’s adventures, be they comedic or exciting – with “The Mine” standing out best on the excitement front, while “Sebastian J Cricket” has a lovely floaty and evocative theme. That said, while Desplat makes good use of his orchestra for that atmosphere and feel, none of it really stands out too memorably.

Like the old Disney cartoon version, there are also songs, but nothing as memorable as When You Wish Upon A Star. The opener is “Better Tomorrows,” a very 1960s US sitcom type lightweight song from Ewan McGregor, which almost entirely manages to not hint at the song “Tomorrow” from Annie, and entirely manages to avoid sounding like the theme song from John Woo’s A Better Tomorrow. In fact a lot of tracks in the score also have these brief moments than make you think “isn’t that a couple of notes from…? Nah, can’t be…”

David Bradley gets a song – “My Son” – too, which is rubbish, while Christoph Waltz gets “We Were A King Once” which would probably get good laughs in the SCA. Most of the songs are totally unmemorable trillings by Gregory Mann as Pinocchio, who all but closes out the album (barring a few guitar strums called “Farewell Gepetto”) with a song about poo, improbably titled “Big Baby Il Duce March”, which is guaranteed to make kids in the audience laugh and parents grimace, and them all immediately forget it. It just doesn’t succeed in slamming the sort of people who call themselves Il Duce, or similar, strongly enough either.

The one song that does make its presence known by being different is the choral “The Late Lamented” by Tim Blake Nelson, which you kind of expect to go into an Irish comedy routine like “Three Drunken Monks”. Thankfully the songs are relatively few, with this and “We Were A King Once” being easily the best.

Verdict: As a whole, the score is certainly flowing and enticing and evocative, if not hugely memorable. It’s also good value, with a nice long runtime over 41 tracks – or about 31 if you skip the songs – which is personable, listenable, and feels like a fairytale set in the 18th Century – which is, in the end, what the familiar tale of Pinocchio needs. It just needs more memorable originality too. 7/10

David A McIntee