The thinly-veiled biblical allegories of CS Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia novels have always been wildly popular with children, and there have been various attempts to turn them into tv series over the years, but surprisingly, never a full-scale live-action movie before.  But with the astonishing success of The Lord of the Rings, it was only a matter of time, and indeed 2005 has seen the release of the first of the adaptations, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, with the next six presumably to come later on.  The choice of director - Andrew Adamson, who made the Shrek movies - seemed a very strange one, and early indications are that it is unlikely to be a success on the scale of Rings or, for that matter, Harry Potter - but you never know.

Adamson renewed his acquaintances with his Shrek composer Harry Gregson-Williams for the movie.  Gregson-Williams has been very busy of late, seemingly leaving his Media Ventures shackles well and truly behind him and emerging with a distinctive - and impressive - film music voice of his own.  It is disappointing, therefore, to listen to the first track of this album and not be sure whether it might be music from Gladiator, Enemy of the State, Spy Game, The Rock or Crimson Tide; one thing it certainly doesn't sound like is "The Blitz, 1940", which is what it's meant to evoke.  But still.  If the film itself is obviously designed to look like The Lord of the Rings, it clearly isn't designed to sound like it.  "Evacuating London" which follows would sound at home in an Ayanapa nightclub, with its chilled out pop beat and female vocal, but it certainly doesn't sound at home in war-torn London.  At this stage, with five minutes of the album gone, one might be forgiven for thinking that this was going to turn out to be the most disastrous film score ever written for a major film, but fortunately things get a lot better (well, they couldn't possibly get any worse) thereafter.

"The Wardrobe" finally introduces the kind of beautiful scoring which should have dominated from start to finish, with an arrestingly lovely theme presented in deliberate, subtle orchestration.  (Sadly, the theme - the movie's main theme - sounds so incredibly similar to one of the secondary themes from Star Trek: Insurrection, of all things, that I keep getting distracted!  I'm sure it's only a coincidence - and after a few bars it branches off into something entirely unrelated - but it's still something I can't help but think every time I hear the theme!)  "A Narnia Lullaby" introduces another device which could have felt like an anachronism, an electric violin, but it works surprisingly well and is perfectly effective and indeed pleasant in its countless appearances as the score progresses.  "The White Witch" introduces far darker material, with the choir inevitably throwing its oar in as well, but it's decent enough.  Sadly "From Western Woods to Beaversdam" sees the return of the wailing vocalist and pop beat but fortunately they're subtler here, and therefore don't stick out as being quite so momentously awful, and indeed the second half of the cue is really quite lovely.

The gorgeous "Father Christmas" is a real winner, introducing some real magic into the music for the first time, with the simple music box-like accompaniment to some beautiful choral performances.  "To Aslan's Camp", which follows, remains blighted by the Media Ventures orchestration, but at last is a larger-scale cue which begins to approach the scope of what might have been expected of an epic story like this one.  "The Stone Table" is a lengthy piece which works well on an album, but which again seems far too anachronistic for the film; but never mind, I'm reviewing the album, not the music as heard in the film.  With more samples and percussion loops and vocals and the kitchen sink, it's a really well-constructed piece of music.  Much the same could be said about "The Battle", which is a fine piece of action music for Media Ventures fans.  Finally comes the rather impressive finale, "Only the Beginning of the Adventure", which along with "The Wardrobe" and "Father Christmas", presents just about the only real bits of magical music in the whole score, which is such a shame.  After the score come four songs which aren't that bad, though aren't especially memorable either, and Alanis Morissette's hilarious mispronunciation of "Wunderkind" in her song of the same name (which she even wrote) is perhaps the funniest thing I've heard all year.