Gil Hates Everything

Here at Gil Hates Musicals, we (er, I) are… am… anyway, GHM rarely shies away from controversy. But usually that’s because it’s fun annoying people by saying “Your favourite old / venerated musical is, in fact, horrible tacky outdated crap”. On the occasions where I boost a show, either it doesn’t come as a surprise, or else you don’t know the show, and either way there’s no particular controversy.

So, today I’m going to be telling you that I really liked the soundtrack to “Tarzan”. I think I’ll just slip into this suit of armour before delivering the rest of this review…

When we went to see the “Tarzan” movie, we weren’t convinced – in fact I think we were actively bored – but I wonder whether that’s because we’d seen all the others from the “Disney Renaissance” which started with “The Little Mermaid”. Arguably “Tarzan” comes across as a curious mashup of “The Lion King” and “Pocahontas”, but it generally did well, it rates highly, and (I feel bad for not noticing this while watching it) apparently they had all sorts of funky CGI-painting effects to let them animate the landscapes while Tarzan was swinging around without it looking obviously like animation pasted over the top of CGI – which always looks distracting when it happens.

But one thing Sarah and I agreed on; we didn’t come out of the cinema humming any of the tunes. Phil Collins was on songwriting duty, and, well, there was nothing as epic-seeming as “Circle Of Life”, nor as characterful as the songs from, say, “Mulan” or “Hercules”.

So here I am listening to the soundtrack of the stage show, for which Phil Collins wrote a bunch more songs. And I like it. So the question is, is this just because I like Phil Collins, and wasn’t listening very carefully in the cinema?

Phil Collins can sing perfectly well (and quite high) but he’s relegated to one bonus track on here; he’s most famous for his drumming, as well as being a multi-instrumentalist; he’s a sensible choice to create a percussion-heavy soundtrack…

OK, OK, I really like loud drums, that’s probably the core of it. There are so many bits of this soundtrack, as I listen to it for the fourth time, which annoy the hell out of me – Kid Tarzan’s voice in “I Need To Know”, Jane’s “Waiting For This Moment”. The show follows the Disney template as though desperately trying not to fall off a tightrope. (Unclench, boys, really, you can try other things.) The lyrics talk about flying and spirit and other such crap (“in learning you will teach, and in teaching you will learn”) with such relentless monotony that you’ll find yourself yearning for the intellectual depth of a boy band on the radio. And every time Jane opens her mouth you will reach for your revolver.

But: the music for “Two Worlds” and “Son Of Man” is great, the title of “Sure As Sun Turns To Moon” sounds stupid but actually the song is kinda cute, and “Trashin’ The Camp” is a fun little action-scat number for the ensemble. And I really don’t often listen to a soundtrack this many times in swift succession. Once through a bunch of showtunes and I’m usually done for the day and need something else to decompress. But this… this seemed very easy on the ears.

And I think that’s the thing; this is reasonably good music, and a reasonable listening experience. Mind you, I don’t think it’s strong enough to take seriously as a stage show. I had to completely switch off my lyric parser to enjoy it, because the lyrics are generic morality and melodrama for a junior audience. I’m not completely convinced that they even meet the minimum standards for a show to remain in your heart as “your first show”. But as I say: I really like the music. We’re talking Motown drums (snare on 1 and 3) and some very Phil Collinsy chord changes. It has some pop cred, and as this isn’t a jukebox musical, at least you’re getting something new in that style, as opposed to cheesy cover versions. The instrumentation is also more reminiscent of a movie soundtrack than of a traditional musical theatre orchestra, and thus sounds mildly refreshing.

As you can see from the unusual buzz of comments above, the stage show hasn’t convinced some GHM avids. It managed to run for a year before closing, but you have to wonder – and this question intrigues me with respect to the forthcoming Spider-Man musical, too – whose bright idea it was to insist that the world needed a stage show of this movie in particular. How much aerial work and acrobatics you can convincingly jam into a show which is also intended to feature some semblance of singing and acting, ideally without the leads wheezing in exhaustion between lines, or taking thirty seconds to strap themselves into and out of safety rigs each time they vault over a branch? I have no particular intention of finding out, so as an advert for the show, “Tarzan – The Musical” gets three out of ten pieces of bamboo, and fails. But as music, I’m giving it eight out of ten, and I recommend you give it a listen. Treat it as a kind of concept album… and maybe experiment with pretending that you don’t understand English as you listen to the songs.

Of course, if you don’t like Phil Collins, you’re gonna hate it anyway, but then there’s gonna be no talking to you, is there ;-)

(originally posted 2009)