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Review of Shrek 2 (Harry Gregson-Williams)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... if you are looking for the themes and lightheartedness of
the franchise expressed with consistent instrumentation and rhythmic
flow that is arguably superior to the other sequel scores to follow.
Avoid it... if you prefer the slapstick comedy style of the original Shrek score or if you're primarily interested in the multitude of songs associated with the film.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
Shrek 2: (Harry Gregson-Williams) Riding the wave
created by the monumental success of Shrek a few years before,
this direct sequel begins right where the first tale left off. Several
new peripheral characters adorn Shrek 2 with even more eccentric
humor than before, and despite a tendency for such sequels to exhibit
the many straight-to-video kinds of production faults, Shrek 2
suffers no such problems and opened the doors for several more franchise
entries to follow. While purists will cling to the original film to the
very end, Shrek 2 was an immense popular triumph, not only
continuing the massive fiscal success of the franchise at the box office
but also gaining a surprisingly positive response from hardened critics
as well. The music for the first film was very much a mirror of the
story's pop-culture range, with the newly minted animation scoring duo
of Harry Gregson-Williams and John Powell providing an orchestral
punch-line comedy score. While popular and successful in and of itself,
that original score provided some challenges when attempting to enjoy it
apart from the film; the slapstick nature of the film's silliness
translates directly to the composers' music, causing narrative issues
and an inconsistent sound from jump to jump and line to line. The
fruitful collaboration between Gregson-Williams and Powell on these
children's films was concluding at the time, their careers spinning off
into niches of their own. While Powell was eventually destined to
continue his mastery in the animation realm later in the decade, his
career in the near term was headed for the shinier pastures of
mainstream action. During the interim, Gregson-Williams kept a firmer
foot in the door of the children's realm before himself shifting his
concentration to the action and thriller domains, and his vivacious and
energizing score for Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas just over a
year prior to this Shrek sequel affirmed his solo capabilities in
the genre. Gregson-Williams took musical control of this franchise for
Shrek 2 and its two successors, extending many of the same themes
and basic flavors experienced in the first film. Any time characters and
themes are faithfully retained in a sequel, whether the composers are
the same or not, you do have the opportunity to hear those ideas
developed in new ways and in greater depth. You receive this satisfying
development and even more additional substance than you might expect in
the score for Shrek 2.
The general style employed by Gregson-Williams for Shrek 2 is just as much of an extension of Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas as it is of the original Shrek. A very welcomed consistency of sound was immediately retained in the music for this series, with Gregson-Williams exploring a solid and familiar base of rhythms, themes, and instrumentation from start to finish. He still manages to incorporate some of the slapstick elements, and in "Far Far Away," you encounter the "dissolving orchestra" trick as the players comically drop off as they would in a performance humiliatingly cut short. In "The Ball," you hear a big band jazz performance of the primary theme and in "Tonight on 'Knights'" there is a funked-out techno-rock interlude along similar lines. The waltz in "Family Dinner" instills some stuffiness into the equation. A brief reference to the style of Mission: Impossible graces "The Mission" and the dragon's action theme from the first film rears its daring character thereafter; this theme is also given full treatment in "Muffin Man" and the short "Dragon!!" reprise at the very end. It is still difficult to figure how Gregson-Williams and Powell couldn't have had Trevor Rabin's theme for Deep Blue Sea in their heads when composing this idea, and its curiosity continues here in these short passages. But for the rest of the length of the score, the orchestra shines with more complete and better developed expressions of other motifs from the first film. The pseudo-scary rhythmic opening to "The Factory" is a delight. The scenes dealing with Fiona's personality receive special treatment, often producing moments of emotional and magical awe, highlighted by "Fiona's Room" and "Magic Tea." The instrumentation is largely related to base orchestral elements, though the Spanish guitar insertion in "By the Ol' Oak" is a welcomed deviation for the Puss in Boots character. The choir is not as pronounced in Shrek 2 as it had been in Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas, but it provides a few moments of movie magic that fans of Chicken Run's finale have come to expect from these projects. The overall clarity of the recording is crystal clear on the score-only album, superior mixing of each element and tremendous balance across all ranges yielding impressive results, especially during soft and pretty performances of the main fairy tale theme. Across the board, Shrek 2 is an improvement over its predecessor and is generally considered on par with Shrek Forever After and a step above Shrek the Third in the franchise. ****
TRACK LISTINGS:
Total Time: 40:35
NOTES & QUOTES:
The insert includes extensive movie stills but no extra
information about the score or film.
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