The second installment in my look back at the lesser discussed James Horner scores that I too have never heard. Part 1 can be found here: https://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=133826

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Once Around (1990)



A romantic comedy-drama from Swedish director Lasse Hallstrom (What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?, The Cider House Rules, The Shipping News), Once Around follows the shenanigans of a close-knit Italian-American family who’s life gets interrupted when one of the daughters marries an older man. Yet another film I’ve never heard of, the cast is very solid with Richard Dreyfuss, Holly Hunter, Danny Aiello and Laura San Giacomo starring which has to count for something… or perhaps not. The film was a box office disappointment upon release and seems to have been largely forgotten now (though given my assertion of that same sentiment about Red Heat, I’m sure one of y’all will pipe up with this being a sentimental favorite or something… ).



As for the score, Horner takes a slightly odd approach as he combines his usual soft orchestral palette for small scale dramas with two core themes taken from… his two most popular children’s animations of the prior decade. Presented in succession (no, not that one, Vik!) during “The Apology”, the core themes are very minor re-workings of the opening moments of The Land Before Time and “Somewhere Out There” from An American Tail, the latter slightly tweaked while the “Land Before Time” lift is practically unaltered. A handful of other token Horner-sims also pepper the score from works such as Cocoon, The Name of the Rose and Field of Dreams making Once Around a very familiar yet comforting listen even if it is all a blatant recycled affair. Props, though, to Horner for taking his two primary themes and giving them a jazz makeover for the opening “Big Band on Ice” track.



Special note needs to be made of the album presentation, though, which separates Horner’s score amongst a variety of songs or instrumental pieces. Two versions of “Fly Me to the Moon” (one song, one instrumental) is present as well as the song “Glory of Love” and an excerpt from “The Emperors Waltz” by Johann Strauss though easily the most jarring (yet entertaining) inclusion is the Arabian instrumental “Sulu Kule (Karsilama)”, that as someone who hasn’t seen the film, seems to come out of nowhere. While it would have been nice to have all of Horner’s score tracks gathered together, the album flow is surprisingly well put together for such varied musical inclusions.



Despite the blatant recycled nature of the score, I can’t help but really enjoy Horner’s work here… though it is helped by being based on two of his masterpieces for animation. It’s a lite, rather fleeting work on album only constituting about 19 minutes of the 34 minute album yet Horner makes the most of it. Perhaps it’s misty eyed nostalgia for Horner’s lite drama stylings of this period, but I’d personally give Once Around a solid recommendation for fans of the composer. I also recommend the whole album experience at it’s actually a lot of fun, for once.



Score:

3/5


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Bopha! (1993)



Here’s an interesting tidbit: did you know Morgan Freeman (yes, THAT Morgan Freeman) directed a movie? That movie was Bopha! which is about political and civil unrest in Africa during the apartheid era namely focusing on a police officer (Danny Glover) and his family… and it was a box office bomb. The other interesting tidbit is that James Horner did the music. 



This will be a very short entry as there’s honestly not much to say about Bopha! outside of that the Main theme is taken from Glory (fitting, I guess) and that most of the rest of the score is a mixture of synths and solo instruments with everyones favorite shakuhachi flute front-and-center. Any of the interesting bits of this endeavor are merely shadows of one of three other Horner synth based scores: Patriot Games, Thunderheart or The Name of the Rose with the Patriot Games being the most heavily “borrowed” from. A truly baffling aspect of the score is that some tracks are mixed in a way that the music is barely audible, namely when it’s a passage for soft synths.



Considering the social and political upheaval of the story and the setting, it’s highly frustrating how pedestrian and (probably most damning) un-involving Horner’s score is. For the curious the opening or closing track with the African choir is really all one needs from this lackluster effort, sadly the lowest work thus far on this journey.



Score:

1/5



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Once Upon a Forest (1993)



Fun story: I vaguely remember my Mom taking me and my cousins to see some animated kids film about cute little animals when I was much younger (though apparently it was a dollar theater or something, because it definitely was not the original run) and leaving the theater crying, not because of the story or characters but because of the music. Fast-forward to my college years and The Nostalgia Critic reviews Once Upon a Forest and while watching the video (yes, sadly I used to watch NC…) I go “Oh! OH! THAT’S the movie I remember making me cry as a kid!!” which then led me to checking the score out and… viola, it was James Horner. Should probably mention that by this point I was fully into soundtracks and already knew who Horner was and loved the man’s music. So don’t think think this was me “discovering” Horner or the like. 



Anyway, the film itself is rather bad, bombing at the box office and getting largely eviscerated by critics both at the time and since. As for Horner’s score, it’s another “recycled” effort taking bits and pieces from Willow, An American Tail, Land Before Time, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, Star Trek II-III, Aliens and even Something Wicked This Way Comes for a massive melting pot of very amiable music… mostly. The action cues are jarringly brutal and violent compared to the surrounding material and feel as though they come from a very different film while the handful of songs range from saccharine but nice (“Please Wake Up”) to obnoxious (“He’s Gone/He’s Back”) and mind numbingly repetitive (“Once Upon a Time with Me”). The primary theme is lovely, though it’s just the Family theme from …I Shrunk the Kids, and is given plenty of air time throughout the score though the gorgeous end credits performance is sadly stuck under the song “Once Upon a Time with Me”. 



Overall Once… a Forest is a perfectly serviceable Horner children’s animated film score with a handful of standout moments though the whole affair pales in comparison to what the composer did elsewhere within the genre, both before and concurrently. Still, fans of this side of Horner should still check out the album if one can find it as the highlights do warranted investigation… just don’t expect too much from this one.



Score:

3 1/2 out of 5