Kids and parents are falling in love with Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made, the newest Disney+ original movie. Also available for streaming is the Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, featuring a new score from Rolfe Kent. With a large number of credits to his name, including Disney’s Freaky Friday and Hulu’s Casual, Rolfe Kent is no stranger to the Walt Disney Company.
Timmy Failure is about a boy with his own detective agency and the score incorporates some musical hallmarks of the detective/spy genre. Percussion is used in interesting ways to create suspense, like a ticking countdown clock. Horns and winds add to the mysterious allure of these musical sequences. The best example of this is in a track called “Tackling the Thief and Taking it to the Air,” one of my favorites on this release.
That being said, the soundtrack to Timmy Failure sounds more like something that would accompany a European comedy than a film set in the United States, thereby capturing the spirit of Portland, OR, where the film takes place. It’s eclectic, diverse, and a little bit weird. It’s not a normal score and as Timmy would say, “Normal is for normal people.”
The tone of the film is more whimsical and fun than anything else. It captures the spirited essence of childhood, albeit one from the point of view of a kid who takes himself and the world way too seriously. Many of the Timmy’s wild imagination moments create fun breakaways in the score where you’ll suddenly hear something that sounds like a western or a Bollywood musical.
There are a couple of repeating themes that come into play. The first follows Timmy Failure’s detective business, a floaty ditty that takes on different emotions depending on the instruments used. At times it’s adventurous or mysterious, at others it almost plays like a joyous piece. It’s the most repeated theme on the soundtrack and a good place to find it is in the first trac, “My Name is Failure.”
There’s also a more somber composition that underscores Timmy’s trials. The main melody of it is often performed with a whistle, like on a track called “Agency Lost.” It becomes bigger and more symphonic later on a track titled “I’m Sorry/Crispin Found Something.”
There is a sad theme that uses chorals to intensify the somber feeling in a track called “Goodbye to Total.” It comes back into play in “Timmy Looks for Total,” where it is transformed into a happier emotion when the two are reunited. That moment becomes the biggest piece of inspirational score on the soundtrack.
The Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made Original Soundtrack by Kent Rolfe provides some wonderful and melodic themes that can accompany your life wherever streaming music can join you. It features an impressively vast array of world instruments to create a score that is unlike anything you’ve ever heard before. I recommend listening to it apart from the film to truly appreciate the detailed level of craftsmanship that went into this masterpiece.
More Timmy Failure Articles: