Buy it... if you admire John Powell's highly diversified talents across several genres of music and/or are specifically seeking the massively serious, dramatic cues from the film.

Avoid it... if you seek any of the major songs you heard in the film.

Powell

Happy Feet: (John Powell) One can only wonder how good Happy Feet could have been if it hadn't decided to punch audiences in the face with a political statement in the last half hour. A beautifully rendered film about the world's favorite tuxedoed fuzzies from Antarctica, Happy Feet offers a dazzling collection of elements sure to please the under-10 crowd. It's a musical on ice, telling the tale of a young penguin unable to sing and therefore alienated from the penguin society. As a tap-dancer, this penguin's journey to acceptance follows chances, dance numbers, and sentimental interludes, with critics noting that the fantastic camera work for the animation will make the film tolerable for any adult. But Happy Feet isn't without its flaws; some viewers have been bothered by the film's handling of the idea of "being different," while others simply can't get over the ending. As live action humans invade the picture, audiences are treated to pro-conservation statements that are likely to fly over the heads of the 10-year-olds and annoy the adults. Nevertheless, music plays a pivotal role in the film, and composer John Powell was involved with the film for several years as he helped shape the production. In musical format, several songs were incorporated into Happy Feet in a similar fashion to the immensely popular Moulin Rouge a few years ago, with a substantial blending of underscore in between. The voices of the actors are employed for the songs, which in the case of Nicole Kidman and Robin Williams have already been proven. Powell had a direct hand in selecting and/or arranging and producing the songs for the film, a good move considering the potential disconnection that can always happen between the songs and score in such a project.

While the songs are likely to be the most memorable musical element of the movie for viewers of all ages, the amount of score is significantly greater in running length, extending 50% longer than the song usage. As you might expect, the demands of the film cause the score to jump around in genre frequently, ranging from serious drama to outrageous parodies of all kinds of world music. Performed by a sizable group of orchestral players in Australia, as well as several choral groups from that country and Powell's usual array of synthetic elements evolved from basic Hans Zimmer constructs, Happy Feet is a massive score. It's the kind of effort from Powell that begs for attention simply because of its organizational scope and the nightmare it could have been to arrange. Whether you appreciate it or not, Powell's work here is very admirable, and it serves at the very least as an exhibition of the talent that has led him to great leaps beyond the majority of composers graduated from Zimmer's fraternity. That said, in both song and score, Happy Feet is all over the map. Interpolations from old songs, flamenco flair, loungey jazz, and hip hop rhythms mingle with a surprisingly serious remainder of underscore. Without a doubt, "The Leader of the Pack" will cause some due belly laughs. A snippet of James Horner's Zorro stylings work their way into "The Hill." The ventures into comedy and parody are expected in a movie like Happy Feet, but the dramatic cues are the ones that steal the show for listeners of strictly the underscore. The choral layers in Happy Feet are magnificent, from the penguins' chants in "The Huddle" to the vocal accompaniment of the full-fledged orchestral action.

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Of particular interest is the secondary theme representing the "aliens" in the movie, and for these wretched-looking creatures and their vessels, Powell steals some blatant moves from David Arnold's Stargate (especially at the outset of "The Alien Ships"). The tragedy in this theme is so thick that it almost spoils the rest of the score, and when combined with the "Helicopter" and "Communication" at the end (the latter of which has the heavily mixed tapping sounds as a sort of source music inclusion), it's easy to imagine that score collectors will take Powell's grandiose cues from Happy Feet and put them aside in their own compilation. Some listeners might hear too much influence from the Media Ventures library of bass-heavy sampling; there are moments of majesty with direct ties to Zimmer's The Lion King. A few of the electronic rhythms in chase cues in the latter half of the film can be a tad annoying. Further connections can be drawn between the synthetic samples used in the major action pieces here (as in "Killer Whales") and the sounds you regularly hear in Arnold's James Bond writing. That said, the orchestral action pieces and "cues of awe" are aided by an outstanding recording quality; Powell's synthetics, which largely do not interfere with the live players, are well integrated into a vibrant orchestra and the gorgeous chorales. The situation of Happy Feet's music on album leaves much to be desired; this is a film that requires the musical numbers and score to be presented together. The score-only album, however, is offered at a whopping 68 minutes, and as rare as that length is for an animated film, many score collectors will be glad to be rid of the songs. Overall, it's a severely disjointed overall collection of cues, but the dramatic highlights are more than enough to pleasantly surprise you. ****

Bias Check:

For John Powell reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 2.96 (in 25 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.11 (in 35,149 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.