> 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
> -------------------
> 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

Still gotta hear this one!
> ——————————


> 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
Still gotta...maybe?...hear this one....?
> 

————————


> 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
Haha I also watched this as a kid, though my family loved it and we watched the VHS just a ridiculous amount of times. In fact, I grew up with this Horner score more as a kid than Land Before Time, which made me and my sister cry so we rarely ever watched it. Still enjoy the movie as a nostalgia berry-tickle, and the music is lovely.
Great write up again bud, loving this series!
(Message edited on Wednesday, May 29, 2024, at 1:42 p.m.)
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I find it humorous that while you agree with me on this, Riley has the token "this was my childhood!!!" response.
