By John Paesano

Disney, out now

 

All change for the latest visit to the Museum…

Disney’s cartoon special reboot of the Night At The Museum brings back the second film’s main antagonist, the Ancient Egyptian Pharoah Kahmunrah, but doesn’t bring back the cinematic trilogy’s composer, Alan Silvestri. Instead, just as it introduces a new lead character in the form of the original Larry’s son, Nick, it also introduces a new composer, in the form of John Paesano.

Paesano may be new to the franchise, but not to audiences, having scored the Daredevil and Defenders TV series, and the Diary Of A Wimpy Kid movies.

Despite all the changes from the movies, and complete recast of all the prior characters, it’s a delight to hear arrangements of Silvestri’s main theme in the new score, most obviously and triumphantly in “Return To The Museum,” this film’s main theme. It does crop up again, for example in “Nick’s New Job,” “I’m Not My Dad,” and “Let’s Go Home”. It’s lovely to hear each time, and is if anything a slightly lighter version than before, too. Although “Return To The Museum” is the opening main theme, it’s not the first track here, that honour going to a lightweight song, “Good Times” by Celebration Society, whoever they are, which is the kind of thing you’d expect to hear in pretty much any Disney/Pixar kind of film.

Although the main antagonist is a Pharoah, there’s basically no sign of Hollywood’s traditional sort of “Egyptian” related music; the sort you hear in Mummy films. As with the character’s appearance in the second film, though, there is a threatening voice choir motif for him, first appearing in “The Tablet Is Missing,” and recurring throughout, notably in “He’s Getting Away” and “Into The Temple”. It’s not the same choral motif as in the second film, but again lighter, however also broadening and used in a wider variety of ways, if none that sound particularly Egyptian; merely generically villainous.

Kahmunrah Rises Again is more broadly comedic than its forebears, and the score reflects this. While there are exciting tracks and ones that are nostalgically true to the Silvestri scores from the films, they are  too-frequently interrupted by light bouncy comedy tracks that really sound like the chase music you’d expect to hear in a cartoon like Scooby Doo or one of the Detective’s adventures in The Pink Panther Show. These elements are just a little too light and frothy, and are something of a disappointment compared to the rest of it.

Verdict: In the end, the music here is Night At The Museum Lite. The classic theme returns, and there are some nice moments of villainous vocal, but the more cartoony bits don’t work as a listening experience even though it’s from an animation, and the song slides unmemorably in one ear and straight out the other. 7/10

David A McIntee