Buy it... if you love having your concentration completely consumed by wildly rambunctious and enthusiastically spirited parody scores of the highest symphonic order.

Avoid it... if the buzzing sound of a swarm of kazoos could give you nightmares, wilt your houseplants, send pets fleeing, and stunt the intellectual development of your children.

Powell
Gregson- Williams

Chicken Run: (John Powell and Harry Gregson-Williams) After ten years of entertaining movie-goers with his Oscar-winning short films involving Wallace and Gromit, director and producer Nick Park teamed up with Peter Lord to create Chicken Run in 2000, the first feature length film from Aardman Animations. At a time when the industry had transcended the look of 2-D animation, Park's distinct claymation style was a throwback and potential obstacle to success. But with a witty story full of humor aimed mostly at adults, Chicken Run opened to widespread critical praise. The story is roughly based on the famed World War II-set film The Great Escape, but with chickens stuck on a farm with nasty owners. Not satisfied with lives of laying eggs and eventually becoming dinner, the chickens enlist the help of a circus rooster (who accidentally enters the scene) to help them fly over the fence of their pen and enjoy freedom. The chicken coops include a variety of funny characters that each have metaphorical purposes, but the voices of Mel Gibson as the rooster and Miranda Richardson as the evil Mrs. Tweedy are the production's star power. When Dreamworks bought the distribution rights to Chicken Run, it became inevitable that either Hans Zimmer or one of his many students from Media Ventures would provide the score, and, in this case, the team that brought a dynamic and funky sound to Antz returned for the job. Upstart composers John Powell and Harry Gregson-Williams not only proved through the years to be an effective team on various animation projects, but they individually would be recognized as the two most successful Media Ventures products in their eventual solo careers.

Even as cynics started to admit at the time, Powell and Gregson-Williams managed to create a superior blend of symphonic style that deviated from the traditional electronic trademarks of other Media Ventures composers. While Antz may have been a solid effort, it wasn't until Chicken Run that the collaboration began to really receive mostly positive recognition. For Chicken Run, Powell and Gregson-Williams painstakingly create a satirical salute to famous scoring styles of eras past and perform them with a vigorous ensemble of orchestral and specialty instruments. In the various emotional sectors of the score, you hear inspiration taken from Elmer Bernstein western rhythms, Erich Korngold sea adventures, Ron Goodwin flight marches, Jerry Goldsmith war epics, Danny Elfman comedy swing, Lalo Schifrin jazz appeal, and others. The integration of these ideas is so pervasive in Chicken Run that the score can almost overwhelm you with its blatant, endless series of parodies. Luckily, the rendering of the resulting music is so robust that the enthusiasm of the overall work is endearing enough to compensate for any flaws a listener may find with the individual technical notes of emulation. Its sense of humor is conveyed with an attractive symphonic spirit and a sophisticated range of solo accents. The orchestra manages to contribute without being mixed in the manner that tends to make Zimmer-related scores have a harsh, synthetic edge. There does seem to be some electronically-produced bass accentuation in the sonic spectrum (aside from the obvious, actual electric bass used in parts), but the orchestra's sound is crisp and clean.

The composers' use of kazoos, bagpipes, harmonica, whistling, and other intriguing elements, adds crucial character, just as a light choir offers some faux-spectacular moments to the plight of the chickens. The kazoos in particular are key, because they're so rarely used in film scores that they clearly stand out. Not since The Road to Wellville by Rachel Portman had they been so prominently used, and they will understandably be a source of significant irritation for some listeners. Thematically, the score utilizes several themes for various concepts and situations and Powell and Gregson-Williams admirably remain very loyal to those ideas. It is in their ranks that many of the parody references make themselves heard, though in the case of some of the shorter references, such as the John Williams/Jaws quote at the start of "Babs' Big Break," the usage is singular. The Goodwin-style march that leads the chickens on their quest is immediately heard in "Opening Escape" and proves to be quite malleable throughout the score. It can be as tender as the string and woodwind lament heard in "Up on the Roof" (which has a touch of Alan Silvestri's Cast Away in tone) or as wildly, snare-ripping frenetic as it typically is in the action sequences. A march heard most prominently in the opening minute of "Into the Pie Machine" is a theme for the Tweedys and their menacing threat of death; although this idea only makes a real impact late in the score, it's a charged and effective motif. A comedy motif heard sporadically in the first half of the score, often with wicked electric bass rhythms, builds to a frenzy in "Building the Crate," which then offers the construction motif that is arguably the highlight of the entire score.

Used primarily in this cue and "The Chickens are Revolting," this determined, classically-inclined theme overshadows all of the ideas in the score. The remarkably charged presentation of the idea in the last two minutes of "Building the Crate" makes the cue amongst the most satisfying and, along with the kazoos in the role of a chorus, humorously unique in modern cinema. Overall, Chicken Run is extremely likable in character and a technical marvel in its orchestration and outstanding recording quality. It is, however, an overload of orchestral bombast and energy, with just too much flair to hold together for some listeners. As well as the composers succeed in their satirical tributes, it is this exact constant throughout Chicken Run that makes it a difficult score to enjoy unless you're looking for music that will consume all of your concentration. The quotes taken from famous motifs of the past become a burden after their tenth statements, and the two songs in the middle of the album are an unfortunate distraction. Still, for enthusiasts of highly sophisticated orchestral comedy and satire, Chicken Run will crank you up. On a side note, Filmtracks has received e-mails (from three separate readers over the years) claiming that the gorgeous choral finale starting at 3:08 into the cue "Lift Off" was used in a post-2000 propaganda film involving warring African tribes. Reportedly, the cue in this "government documentary" accompanies a scene of a desert full of rotting corpses that resulted from ethnic cleansing, and the music was intentionally meant to be incongruous with the visuals. The name of the film and its studio is remains unknown, though similar illegal usage of film music (and most dramatically with Brian Transeau's Stealth, used by Hamas in Lebanon) has been known to happen. Who wants to bet that there aren't any royalties being paid on those dubs? ****   Amazon.com Price Hunt: CD or Download

Bias Check:

For John Powell reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.05 (in 38 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.05 (in 42,939 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars. For Harry Gregson-Williams reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 2.97 (in 31 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.04 (in 49,616 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.