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| 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.
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.
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| Bias Check: |
For John Powell reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.28
(in 50 reviews)
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(in 52,492 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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The insert includes extensive credits and a list of performers, but
no extra information about the score or film.
