Buy it... if you have a soft spot for John Powell's Ice Age scores and wouldn't mind hearing that reliable symphonic sound infused with a heavy dose of Latin flair.

Avoid it... if Powell's scores for such films tend to sound highly derivative to you, for despite the immense creativity the composer lends to Rio's personality, it is still very standard animation music from his proven mould.

Powell

Rio: (John Powell) With a track record like that of Blue Sky Studios, it's hard to imagine that its parent company, 20th Century Fox, won't green-light every project the subsidiary has coming down the pipes. In its short history, Blue Sky has produced the Ice Age franchise, Robots, Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who!, and Rio, each translating their sub-$100 million budgets into immense box office returns (sometimes exceeding half a billion dollars). Their 2011 venture, Rio, continues that trend while also being among the most critically acclaimed of the lot. Its animated protagonists are brightly exotic birds, the two leads a pair of macaws who are extremely rare and are thus the targets of bird smugglers based in Rio de Janeiro. The entire film is essentially comprised of chases of this awkward duo (and friends) by the evil humans and their cohorts in the animal kingdom. An unlikely romance between the macaws and the initial inability of the out-of-place, Minnesota-raised male of the pair leads to inevitable redemption. The movie has been widely praised for its tasteful application of 3D technology and extremely vivid colors. The soundtrack for Rio was meant to play a far greater role in the narrative of the film than in previous Blue Sky animations, with musical elements conveyed directly by characters and source music tied to the region in many scenes. Extending this personality into his score is John Powell, whose contribution is equally saturated with Brazilian-related flavor. The composer has been a reliable mainstay of the studio's animations since Robots in 2005, producing solid music that has served to define his lighter style of writing during the period since. His output for Rio couldn't be any more predictable, taking his established orchestral writing habits and infusing them with a variety of mambo, salsa, and otherwise generally Latin elements with often wild zeal. These affable ethnic aspects in Rio help distinguish the otherwise short score (due to the presence of other material in the film) by supplementing Powell's normal, light-hearted symphonic techniques with a slew of creative sounds and rhythms that have been touched upon briefly in comedic circumstances in the composer's past but now dominate an entire score with overflowing personality. On top of that, you get a fair dose of Powell's usual upbeat tendencies for bouncing orchestral themes, some interpolated from the film's songs, and a soaring ensemble conclusion to finish the story with the necessary romantic and redemptive climax. For established enthusiasts of Powell's animated scores, it'll be yet another likable entry, but be careful if Latin flair and the sound effects of tropical bird calls and whistles make your ears twitch.

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While the orchestral parts of Rio sound like Powell on auto-pilot, the ethnically rhythmic and otherwise creative portions, with the help of Carlinhos Brown and Mikael Mutti, truly define its highlights. Perhaps hard to listen to at times, it's difficult not to crack a smile when they use bird calls, loungey Latin elements, whistling, distinctive vocals, and other tropical accents to set a comedy tone of near parody proportion. Lazy brass and woodwind performances over Latin rhythms are beach-side fodder, guitars, lightly tapped percussion, and bass lending coolness to the equation while cooing and chirping bird calls are often mixed at a distance to give the vague impression of a bird's paradise. Starting genuinely when the lead macaw arrives in Rio, this material jumps through several stylistic hurdles in the middle portions of the score, carrying over in smoother variants for the romantic element. The orchestral side of Rio will be more familiar to Powell enthusiasts, dominating the early and late sequences. This ensemble performs the score's primary theme, one of slightly Western tone that resolves itself with enough melodrama to make audiences care about the lead bird. Heard immediately in "Morning Routine," the idea receives several fleeting, almost defeated string renditions early in the score before exploding with brass performances in the last three cues (the action finale). Unfortunately, the progressions of the theme are extremely reminiscent of several previous ones; it begins with a phrase strangely identical to Marc Shaiman's City Slickers and ends in a phrase similar to one used frequently by Powell going all the way back to Chicken Run. Despite its familiarity, Powell does wonders with the idea at the end of the score, and particularly in "Flying." In "Locked Up," he introduces a sleazy secondary theme for the antagonists of the plot, and in succeeding cues, he moves into the primary romance material (which culminates in a sappy rendition for the full ensemble at the end of "Flying"). Rarely does a cue play for long without one of these identities mixing it up with the orchestra and individual ethnic accents. As with many of these Powell animation scores, much praise has to be given to his ability to highlight each instrument in solo roles, whether it's bass strings in "Locked Up," the admirably harmonic bird calls, or bass woodwinds in the villains' material. After Powell's stunning success with How to Train Your Dragon, his scores will inevitably be compared to that benchmark, and while Rio exhibits the same talent in its ranks, the 2011 score lacks the cohesiveness and consistently impressive passages of its predecessor. Those who don't care for the heavy, parody-like Latin influence will likely prefer the composer's recent Mars Needs Moms. Still, Powell is almost always good for a solid three stars in response to these kinds of efforts, and he achieves that rating again with ease. ***   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.