homas M. Disch's 1982 novella The Brave Little Toaster originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and was picked up by a young John Lasseter (Pixar), then at Disney Studios, for development. The film details the quest of a number of common appliances to find their beloved owner, whom they call the Master.
The film was meant for theaters but Disney held it back for television release instead, and video, where it was a big hit. David Newman (whose later films include Ice Age and The Cat in the Hat), then a newcomer to film scoring, provided themes for each appliance: an electric blanket, a vacuum cleaner, a desk lamp, a radio and, of course, a toaster. Strong vocal characterizations added to the success of the film, with Jon Lovitz and the late Phil Hartman (both subsequently of Saturday Night Live) adding plenty of color. Hartman, doing a Jack Nicholson riff for his bonkers air-conditioner character, is especially effective.
The music here isn't quite what one would expect for a film about talking toasters. Newman goes for a full-blown serious score, performed with gusto by the New Japan Philharmonic and conducted by Newman himself. There's plenty of exciting music to go with the journey the appliances must make and the obstacles they overcome, but also some moments of high humor—especially in "The Pond," where Newman makes a melody (see below) out of the noises of the creatures living in the water.
The opening cue, "Main Title," is a pastorale in keeping with the dream the appliances are sharing of life with their beloved young master. But soon "They All Wake Up" to find themselves in the family's summer cottage, where all the other used appliances (including Phil Hartman's air-conditioner character) have been relegated—and that car that is coming isn't their owner at all, but a real estate agent. The place is being sold!
Before long, the appliances, headed by the brave toaster of the title, resolve to set out through the forest in search of their master. The question how to proceed—they need electricity after all—is resolved in a funny cue (one of two or three that include sound effects and bits of dialogue from the movie), "They Look for Transportation," with a Dixieland
clarinet taking the jaunty lead while, in voice-over, Lampy brainstorms various means of transportation.
But humor is definitely not to the fore in the music here. Throughout the score, Newman conveys complexity and brightness with busy orchestrations and an accomplished use of tritones in his melodic passages. The serious nature of the storyline is kept in spotlight.
Fun for Van Dyke Parks fans
Other notable cues include "Toaster's Dream," with its anvil-hits for emphasis, and "Blender's Motor Is Sold," in which the wayfaring machines, stuck in a secondhand shop, watch in horror as the eponymous blender has its innards removed for sale.
Cue seven, "Out Into the World," is the first of four songs by Van Dyke Parks (orchestrated by Newman) that are woven into the score. For the most part they're pleasant enough, if not exactly hummable, and sound rather Broadway-ish. Newman does well by Parks, bringing some of the songwriter's themes into the main body of the score, most notably in the above-mentioned "The Pond," which, in nice contrast, utilizes the main melody line of Parks' "City of Lights." The cleverest Parks song uses Phil Hartman again, this time doing a dead-on Peter Lorre as a hanging lamp, providing lead vocals on "It's a B Movie," with its apropos use of pipe organ and skeletal xylophone.
When at last the toaster and its travel-worn companions make their way to the Big City, they are too late—their master, now an adult and off to college, has already departed—back to the summer cottage to pick up his favorite appliances! But, this being a movie for kids, all's well that ends well—although not before a terrifying visit to a junkyard during Newman's rousing seven-minute "Finale."
Also worthy of note here is the excellent 24-page booklet included with the CD. It's full of interviews, photos of the voice actors, producers and musicians, preproduction character sketches, chronicles of the film's production history and stills from the movie. A bonanza of packaging from Percepto!
