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‘The Bad Guys’ Nods to Classic Caper Movies, and So Does Daniel Pemberton’s Jazzy Heist Score
Jon Burlingame editorThere’s a classic sound to heist films, especially of the ’60s and ’70s – a little jazzy, a little stealthy, occasionally raucous and wild – and composer Daniel Pemberton cleverly channels it throughout “The Bad Guys,” the DreamWorks Animation action comedy that opens today.“The film in some ways is an homage to classic caper movies,” says the English composer, “and it’s a world I really love playing in. You get to be really bold: big breaks, big brass sections, big tunes and big grooves.”Pemberton’s high-energy music sets the mood and drives the action in Pierre Perifel’s animated adventure about a notorious criminal gang (a wolf, a snake, a piranha, a shark and a tarantula) that considers going straight after they cross paths with a guinea-pig philanthropist and their red-fox governor. “At its core, it’s a very joyous score, even though there’s sneakiness, tension, all that kind of stuff,” he notes.
