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Review of Antz (John Powell/Harry Gregson-Williams)

FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:

Buy it... if you enjoy these composers' work for more recent animated films and are interested in hearing their extremely spirited initial mainstream venture.

Avoid it... if hyperactive mambo and jazz music for a full symphony is a recipe that'll send you looking for the Rolaids.

FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:

Antz: (John Powell and Harry Gregson-Williams) While it may not have been the magnificent success in 1998 that A Bug's Life would become, Dreamworks' Antz has nevertheless stood the test of time as a worthy adult-focused companion piece to the Disney entry. Its cast is unparalleled in modern animation, ranging from Woody Allen and Sharon Stone to Sylvester Stallone and Gene Hackman, with the personality of Allen as 'Z' defining the film's mature examinations of psychology, Marxism, and all of the variants you'd typically find in one of Allen's own films. Genuinely adult humor is littered throughout Antz, and while the story includes enough flashiness to keep the kids entertained, the endeavor found itself in an awkward place between the two audiences. To help bridge the gap, composers John Powell and Harry Gregson-Williams provided a score filled with both adult references and enough raw and wild enthusiasm to attract younger ears. The two relative newcomers onto the solo scoring scene had not yet established their own credentials, but few film score collectors ten years later would argue that better composers would come out of Hans Zimmer's Media Ventures factory of clones than Powell and Gregson-Williams. Their collaborations on future animated features (Chicken Run, Shrek, etc) would arguably be more popular than Antz, but you can't help but look back at Antz with amusement. Setting the stage for the large scope of the future animation scores, Powell and Gregson-Williams (with the help of a few other MV junkies on individual cues) would employ 85 orchestral players, 25 choral singers, the usual array of synthesizers and their normal samples, as well as a host of solo performances from the group. At the time, the score was often obnoxious for listeners accustomed to a more tame musical approach for animated films. But it was also a very clear departure from the usual Zimmer sound that these two composers in particular had been identified with in their early scores (both Face/Off and Enemy of the State were sadly underdeveloped clone work), thus providing an overwhelming breath of fresh air for listeners skeptical of new collaboration.

While the score is thematically diverse, it's the overarching attitude and genre choices that define Antz's strangely enticing personality. The funk offered in the score's first half extends from the sophisticated metropolitan musings of plucked strings for 'Z' to the massively mambo-derived "whistle while you work" joy representing the ants' colony. But the musical center of the score would turn out to be two adaptations of famous themes for Antz, including a wickedly polar representation of "Guantanamera" and a lyrically creative variation of "Johnny Comes Marching Home." The latter may not be as integrated into the fabric of the score as it would be in Jerry Goldsmith's Small Soldiers the same year, but it's still memorable. Three primary themes are loyally developed, including the aforementioned jazzy string affair for 'Z' and his social ineptitude. The colony's massively rendered theme bounces with robust movement and features instrumentation the most similar to the upcoming Chicken Run; the cue "The Colony" is a marvelously entertaining and inspiring two minutes of mood-building spirit. The more shadowy "General Mandible" is given a mundane minor key theme of origins rooted in Zimmer's simplistic progressions and partially synthetic instrumentation. All three themes would appear in full at least three times, with the first two often co-existing in the numerous crescendos of action throughout the score. As would become custom, Antz would highlight its resolution with a choral crescendo of grand beauty and a thematic wrap-up. The main weakness of the Antz score is its downward turn in its latter half. After sparking the film to life with outrageous personality in its initial half hour, the action material during and after the ants go to war is largely uninteresting and fails to offer further creativity in its thematic integrations. The exception is "Ant Revolution," which returns to the personality of the film's opening moments and throws in some bass woodwind rhythms highly reminiscent of Rachel Portman's comedy works. Overall, Powell and Gregson-Williams may not have been in top form by 1998, but Antz has fifteen or so minutes of truly magical and addictive personality more cohesive and enjoyable than Danny Elfman's similar attempts at the time. Just make sure you're in the mood...  ****

TRACK LISTINGS:

Total Time: 52:43

• 1. Opening Titles - Z's Theme (1:59) • 2. The Colony (1:55) • 3. General Mandible (2:21) • 4. Princess Bala (0:56) • 5. The Bar (1:27) • 6. "There is a Better Place..." (1:19) • 7. "Guantanamera"/"6:15 Time To Dance" (3:16) • 8. The Antz Go Marching to War (3:48) • 9. Weaver and Azteca Flirt (1:53) • 10. The Death of Barbados (2:06)

• 11. The Antz Marching Band (1:15) • 12. The Magnifying Glass (1:58) • 13. Ant Revolution (1:47) • 14. Mandible and Cutter Plot (2:05) • 15. The Picnic Table (2:43) • 16. The Big Shoe (2:08) • 17. Romance in Insectopia (2:29) • 18. Back to the Colony (2:26) • 19. Z to the Rescue (7:43) • 20. Z's Alive! (3:28)

NOTES & QUOTES:

The insert contains no extra information about the film or score. Some promotional variations of the insert included the following summary notes:

It may seem extravagant for a film about a bunch of bugs, but soundtrack composers Harry Gregson-Williams and John Powell engaged an 85-piece orchestra and 25-member chorus to perform the music for Antz. In the film, a worker ant with the voice of Woody Allen becomes a hero to his embattled colony and earns the affections of Princess Bala (the voice of Sharon Stone). Appropriately, the music is a mix of dramatic swells, romantic interludes, and celebratory jaunts, scurrying from sprightly jazz to classical dirge to Latin bounce -- there are even allusions to "When Johnny Comes Marching Home" and "Guantanamera." This surprising diversity makes the music from Antz lively enough for children and sophisticated enough for adults.

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The reviews and other textual content contained on the filmtracks.com site may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Christian Clemmensen at Filmtracks Publications. All artwork and sound clips from Antz are Copyright © 1998, Angel Records and cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 12/21/98 and last updated 1/6/07.