Buy it... if you have a soft sport for John Powell's wildly creative animation scores and seek the composer's most explosively frenetic, genre-bending entry in the genre to date.

Avoid it... if you value consistency in your listening experiences and expect any of the moods in this score to last longer than a single minute.

Powell

Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who!: (John Powell) It took until the 2000's before the stories of Dr. Seuss received genuine Hollywood treatment, and unlike the two previous entries of the decade (How the Grinch Stole Christmas and The Cat in the Hat), 20th Century Fox's Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who! is an animated venture meant to improve the studio's standing in that arena. Thoroughly beaten by both Disney/Pixar and Dreamworks, Fox's lineup of recent animation was highlighted by the Ice Age films which, not surprisingly, have an affect on Horton Hears a Who!. Like the two previous Dr. Seuss adaptations, Horton Hears a Who! required significant expansion in the story to fill a feature length film, and it does so by turning it into a buddy picture not much unlike Ice Age or, to a lesser extent, Shrek. The story of the elephant who hears a voice from a tiny world on a floating piece of dust allows for the two classic worlds to be explored in the film, though any fan of the original story can tell you that the added martial arts sequence, among others, is definitely new. Composer John Powell made the rounds through the Dreamworks animation realm before taking the helm of Fox's animated duties with the sequel to Ice Age. Since replacing David Newman as the primary composer for Fox's major animations, Powell's work has consistently proven creative and functional in mind-blowing ways that Newman was never really able to accomplish. Whether you can sit and enjoy either Newman or Powell's music for these films on album is another matter, for they (and Powell especially) provide such outrageous extensions of the classic Carl Stalling sound for old Warner Brothers cartoons that the music often borders on the obnoxious. Such is the call of the day, however, and with Powell now having produced a plethora of frenetic, genre-bending scores for children's animation films, there's an acceptance that his music most definitely works.

Powell seems to try to out-perform his previous creativity with each major animated production, however, and Horton Hears a Who! is perhaps the most wild of the composer's career to date. With an absolutely massive collection of Los Angeles instrumental and choral performers, as well as the expected variety of specialty synthetics and soloists, the score is dazzling without a doubt. Indeed, dazzling it is, but whether it'll be tolerable on album for most score collectors is an entirely separate matter. This score is far closer to the wacky zaniness of early Danny Elfman works than it is the symphonic consistency in development of David Newman or James Horner. Throw in the massive crescendos of grandeur that Powell has often displayed in these scores, as well as the rhythmic humor of George S. Clinton and a touch of snazzy spirit from John Debney, and you get a truly wild musical ride. The inconsistency in style, tempo, and theme is exactly the defining characteristic of Horton Hears a Who!, and while Powell does have elements that do make connections throughout the score, its rapid-fire movement cause them to be a stream-of-consciousness kind of experience that builds a mood over time rather than impressing you with singular moments. The continuation of cross-mixed cues from track to track on album contributes further to this. While the chorus especially, among other elements, offers single explosions that could leave an impression, none of the best highlights of Horton Hears a Who! last long enough to sustain interest. The score only really starts to congeal in its final six major cues, when the chorus exclaims "We Are Hear" in gorgeous layers and Powell sends off the audience in "A Big Ending" with a David Arnold style of patriotic heroism (and a not-so-subtle pull from a James Horner animation song of the previous decade).

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The "Horton Suite" does pass through the general stylistic ideas that Powell established prior, though it doesn't include the tropical style (a la Clinton's The Big Bounce for bass sax and slide guitar) for "Horton Takes a Luxurious Bath" and "Club Nool." Pieces of the score remind of Elfman's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Powell's own co-written Antz (especially in "Breaking with the Mayor" and other dancing cues), and even Jerry Goldsmith's exotic half of The 'Burbs (in "Mountain Chase"). With a few contemplative orchestral moments thrown in, the tone of each cue changes so radically that Horton Hears a Who! is yet another Powell score that begs to have four or five of its cues arranged amongst others in his similar scores. Even more so than Debney, Powell is morphing into a composer without any discernable characteristics or "sound," both a plus and minus when assembling a collection of his works. Overall, this score is adequate, but completely absent of any single defining moment or, like Powell's career, a distinctly memorable characteristic. Given that Powell is starting to operate like Hans Zimmer, with several assistant writers and an army of orchestrators and arrangers, perhaps this fragmented personality should come as no surprise. If you go back and compare a score like Horton Hears a Who! to Antz, you definitely hear the difference. While something like Antz, or even the several other scores that resulted from the same collaboration, is easily listenable on album, Powell's more recent efforts are less effective outside of their context. The genre regularly causes the pitfalls of inconsistency in its music, but Powell seems to exaggerate the wild story shifts rather than compensate for them, and while that style is fine for the mood of the film, it's hard to imagine a large audience for this music on album. ***   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.