Music Composed by Joel McNeely
Rating: *** 1/2

Joel McNeely is way too talented a composer to be gone from features for too long. At first glance it may seem like he’s done just that, but in reality the composer has found a niche scoring Disney’s animated follow-ups Return To Neverland, The Jungle Book 2, Pooh’s Heffalump Movie and finally Mulan II. The first go-round for Mulan, the Hun-ass-kicker, was scored by the late Jerry Goldsmith, earning him an Academy Award nomination for his at times melodic, but mostly thunderous and ethnically infused score. McNeely, who in the late ’90s wrote three scores - Soldier, The Avengers and Virus - possessed with the crackling spirit of Goldsmith’s best action-writing, would seem like a good choice to score Mulan II, and despite the limited running time of Walt Disney Records’ album, he does not disappoint.

Joel McNeely

What score geeks do get is a solid seventeen-minutes of McNeely, or just under twenty-minutes if you include the instrumental version of the song “Here Beside Me”, which features original music by the composer. McNeely never forgets the geographical location of the story, so he loads up his score with plenty of featured silky solos for Chinese woodwinds, all complementing a Western-style orchestra churning out a long, attractive Asian melody (a chorus joins the fold in “The Journey Begins”). McNeely makes nods to Goldsmith’s jumpy bustling, “about town” material from Mulan in the second half of “The Journey Begins”, and nicely ties in his score to Mulan II’s new songs, while keeping his main theme ready and in frequent use. The mood is kept fairly light, respecting the film’s audience, but also manages to build urgency the next minute (”In Love and Trouble”). Action lovers will appreciate McNeely’s dense action style in the aptly titled, “The Attack”, which fits in nicely with anything McNeely wrote for his penultimate action effort Virus. Big theme statements help keep this more rollicking adventure music than heavy-handed thrill music. The composer is allowed to blast through all the stops in the triumphant “Shang Lives!”, while ending the album on a high note with the pleasing “Here Beside Me” instrumental.

The album, which runs just thirty-one minutes and forty-one seconds, is indeed a short one. Given that it is a mix of original songs written by Jeannie Tresori and Elexa Junge (the style here is in the same vein as the original’s — while “A Girl Worth Fighting For”, reprises music and lyrics written by the Mulan team of Matthew Wilder and David Zippel) and score, plus one dreadful pop rendition of “(I Wanna Be) Like Other Girls” performed by the seemingly hell-spawn Atomic Kitten, you have a lot of creatives jockeying for disc space. Which is frustrating because there is plenty of space left over to let McNeely’s score breath a little. All the more head-scratch-inducing is that McNeely recorded his score in London, which means Disney was free to slam forty more minutes of his material onto this CD without forking over the bucks for expensive union re-use fees.

Despite the short run time, this is a worthy purchase for McNeely’s score alone. Budget concious collectors will pinch their pennies in joy when they learn that Walt Disney Records has priced this disc at a mere $6.98 (At Amazon.com).

Music Composed and Conducted by Joel McNeely (2,5,7,8,9,10,11); Songs: Music by Jeanine Tesori, Lyrics by Elexa Junge; Orchestrated by David Slonaker and Nan Schwartz; Score Recorded by Jonathan Allen, Mixed by Rich Breen; Executive Album Producer: Matt Walker; Availability: In print; Label (Catalogue): Walt Disney Records, (61257-7); Release Date: January 25, 2004

01. Lesson Number One (2′26)
Vocal: Lea Salonga
Music: J.Tesori / Lyrics: A.Junge
02. Main Title (1′09)
03. Like Other Girls (2′25)
Vocal: Beth Blankenship,
Mandy Gonzalez, Judy Kuhn
Music: J.Tesori / Lyrics: A.Junge
04. A Girl Worth Fighting For (1′31)
Vocal: Harvey Feirstein, Jerry Tondo,
Gedde Watanabe, Randy Crenshaw
Music: Matthew Wilder
Lyrics: David Zippel, A.Junge
05. Here Beside Me (2′35)
Vocal: Hayley Westenra
Music: J.McNeely / Lyrics: Kate Light
06. (I Wanna Be) Like Other Girls (2′50)
Performed by Atomic Kitten
Music: J.Tesori / Lyrics: Kate Light
07. The Journey Begins (2′59)
08. In Love And In Trouble (4′37)
09. The Attack (4′06) audio clip
10. Shang Lives! (4′28)
11. Here Beside Me (Instrumental) (2′35)

Total Playing Time: 31′41