Buy it... only if you are a collector of Joel McNeely's often superior adventure scores for obscure films and series.

Avoid it... if you demand superior sound quality from all of your digital age scores.

McNeely

Wild America: (Joel McNeely) While the tagline for this 1997 film claimed that it was based on a true story, you'd have a hard time believing that anybody would want to make a film based on the premise. Warner spent the money on it, though, and thus we're left with a ridiculously exaggerated and poorly executed depiction on how three brothers got their start filming wildlife. The Stouffer brothers did indeed grow up to be respected animal photographers, and the aim of Wild America was to show how they, as teenagers, set off on their first adventure with a single camera and film in hand. They encounter dangers along the way that are completely unrealistic, complicated in the film by the fact that some of the animals are obviously not real and the special effects are laughable. It's the find of film that fails to maintain the interest of kids and will simply irritate adults, which is why, among other reasons, the film failed miserably with critics and audiences. One of the greatest ironies of Wild America is that director William Dear's finished product plays as though it was not only starring 18-year-olds, but was created by them too. Composer Joel McNeely, despite the great promise early in his career, some mentoring by John Williams, and hopes by many film music collectors that he would break through into the mainstream, would languish with assignments like Wild America for ten years after this project. It is a typical effort for McNeely in that he usually provides music that is far superior to the films themselves, especially over the course of 1997 and 1998, when he would score a series of duds so magnificent in their failure that his career would backtrack to the realm of straight-to-video projects thereafter. For Wild America, his music would be of distinct relation to the Western Americana spirit of Gold Diggers and The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, featuring the same diversity of orchestral action and character music that makes for wholesome family listening.

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Thematically, Wild America develops several lines for its full orchestra to explore, and these ideas are haphazardly spread through the first half of the score without much organization. McNeely's ideas come together in the highlight cue of "Marshall Flies The Skybolt," with each idea for the boys arranged in succession for soaring performances by the full ensemble. Throughout the score, McNeely alternates between heart-pounding rhythms and mysterious rumblings combined with accents like a small choir and Indian chants. A touch of John Williams' adventure scores of the 80's shows an obvious influence. The final fifteen minutes are a delightful balance of action and innocence perfect for a film like Wild America; the aforementioned lengthy suite cue ("Marshall Flies The Skybolt") and the "Epilogue" offer a light choir. Halfway into the suite, McNeely pulls a seemingly direct quote of James Horner's Casper theme for children's choir, an awkward and sudden diversion. A quick and humorous tribute to Bernard Herrmann's Vertigo is interpolated just over two minutes into "The Cave of a Thousand Sleeping Bears," likely a nod to the fact that McNeely had just conducted the classic score a few years prior for a re-recording. Unfortunately, the Prometheus release of Wild America presents the score in a distant, muffled, and tinny sound. At times, the score lags behind the sound of early 1990's bootlegs, with lackluster clarity and suspect mixing making it difficult to fully enjoy many of the cues. It carries the feel of a 1960's Western released by Film Score Monthly, which is inexcusable given recording and digital transfer technologies of the late 1990's. This presentation ruins the contributions of the accent instruments and voices, with the native flutes and percussion, as well as the Indian chanting in "On the Firing Range" almost unrecognizable due to the muffled atmosphere. McNeely himself has lamented the quality of this release, and the commercial song album features none of McNeely's score to relieve this problem. The end result is an extremely mixed bag; better treatment of this score is definitely merited.   Amazon.com Price Hunt: CD or Download

Score as Written for Film: ****
Score as Heard on CD: ***
Overall: ***

Bias Check:

For Joel McNeely reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.31 (in 16 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.14 (in 7,298 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.