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.

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.