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: CD or Download