4 out of 5

Label: Rambling Records

Produced by: ?

In the 2020s era of movie streaming, when you see actors show up in cheapies – straight-to-streaming houses, or low-run, low-budget cash-ins – it’s generally either a lark or a career shift. Setting aside career shifts as a somewhat more purposeful decision, a lark may be something contractual, a favor, something to fill the schedule, etc.; and depending on many factors but let’s focus on the actor and director and the just-mentioned potential reasons, there’s generally… less buy-in from the performer in such roles.

Over in the soundtrack / score world, I think you do see a version of “lark” contributions as well, but it is – wholly anecdotally – much more rare. Or rather, you see some composers whose names are everywhere, and some who are selective, but I feel like I don’t often see as many onesie-twosie examples of a composer showing up on some project that would equate to a cash-in.

What you do see more frequently are some folks who get spread thin and, for better or worse, are (I’d guess) hired to write a score that sounds one of their other scores… leading to some projects that simply don’t sound as inspired.

Ramin Djawadi, definitely a known name in the scoring scene by this point, did his time in the trenches, scoring smaller films of all types before scoring it big primarily on TV. Looking at his fit-to-burst resume of big budget projects, you’d expect to find a fair amount of the latter mentioned above – less inspired works – but probably not the afore-mentioned onesie-twosies. And you’d be confounded on both of those expectations. While I might not get in to all of Ramin’s scores as much as others, there are rarely ones that feel phoned in, even when the mandate is rather clearly “give us more Game of Thrones,” Djawadi will (from my perspective) find some new avenue or sound to explore. Alongside this, you’ll see a string of absolutely odd janky fare, particularly in the animated genre. As it turns out, a lot of this may be tied to one of his older works – the off-brand CG kids flick Fly Me to the Moon’s score – as he’s continued to score the director of that film’s works.

…All of which is the background to justify my saying: that Ben Stassen’s and Vincent Kesteloot’s 0% Rotten Tomatoed Queen’s Corgi kids film happens to have one of the best Djawadi scores of all time.

There is a bit of a caveat here: Ramin gets so experimental throughout this score that it’s kind of missing a proper transition to that experimentation. It already starts out in delightful territory – harpsichord sounds providing an air of elegance as the movie’s theme is woven in and out of classical standards, underpinned by relatively tight runtimes and Djawadi’s pop sensibilities. But with Rodeo Time – we’ll presume this is a point when the movie’s dogs start to go on an adventure – we instantly kick into genre riffs: folk, big band, hip hop, rock… it’s all on the menu. This hard cut kind of works, but it is truly a drastic one, from stiff upper lipped light touches and instrumentation to distortion and electronics. This section of the movie / score is sustained for quite a while, though, which is a plus/minus: it makes the change feel like less of a shtick (Ramin is committed to the experiment, as always), but the more we go along, the further separated from the opening music this all becomes.

I would also note, very much on a positive side, that this is not the cookie cutter kidz bop of which you may be thinking, the kind of standard “fun” musical numbers that take cues from Looney Tunes and genericize it all; Ramin is applying a lot of his tricks, digging deep into earlier works like Clash of the Titans to find atypical smashes of melody and musical heft. This all gets to somewhat of a peak on Fight Club, after which the movie likely switches to some type of redemptive arc, and the music slowly begins to reincorporate some softer elements. We never get back to the sedate sounds of the opening, but longer tracks like Chief have sections that get close; tossing some mixes like this before the aforementioned hard cut of Rodeo Time may have smoothed things out. And reflective of the mismatched opening in some ways, while the last section of the score is different vibed from the middle, it is also lacking in a very conclusive moment. Fire At the Palace’s title sounds like a climax, and it is a thrilling track, there’s just some final punch missing in these final tunes.

If not evident from my guessing about the movie’s scenes, I have not seen The Queen’s Corgi. I’m also admittedly bias towards Ramin, but still: I’d bet some of the soundtrack’s flaws can be sourced to the movie not being the best either – lacking great scene / mood transitions, for example. Regardless, this partnership Ramin seems to have with the film’s directors puts him on some surprising projects, but as evident with this one, they are not larks, and should not be ignored. If anything, the not-Hollywood status of the movie opens the composer up to embracing some of the experimentation found more frequently in his early work, making Corgi into one of his most enthused and unique compositions in some while.