> Over the years I've come to think it's more the latter than the former. It
> sounds very, very different from the rest of the score, even with the
> themes worked in so effectively, and if it weren't an all-time-great cue I
> think people would be less forgiving of how much it stands out.

I don't mind it precisely because the themes are worked in so well. One of the things that makes Powell's zaniest animated scores so enjoyable to me is that you'll often hear the same theme done in like 10 different musical genres, take a score like Robots for instance. The melodic cohesion makes up for the lack of stylistic cohesion and then some. "Forbidden Friendship" is a pretty mild diversion by those standards!

I really don't mind that much if a composer takes a distinct approach to a key scene to help make it stand out, especially if it's done as a montage; to keep it in the animated realm, nobody dinks Goldsmith for the anachronistic "Haircut", because a) it uses the main theme and b) it fucking rules. I generally think too much variety is by far the lesser ill compared to too much sameness/homogeneity in a score; stay true to your themes and I don't really care where you take them.