An American Tail: Fievel Goes West

This is a more exciting follow up to the original American Tail that was also scored by Horner. Where the original took a generally understated approach, the Western trappings of the second film means that Horner goes for a much bigger approach. The opening song is the sequel's equivalent of Somewhere Out There and it is actually a fairly decent follow up. It perhaps sounds a little too much like the original to be praised as much, but it at least keeps some kind of running style between the films and their music. The opening overture starts with the same mournful violin solo as the original did, but soon bursts into Horner's exciting Western music. This crops up several times throughout the score in conjunction with another Western theme that actually starts very much the theme from There Are No Cats in America, a song from the original. Cat Rumble is an exciting action cue that seems to hint at Horner's big band style but isn't actually similar to anything from any other of his scores that I've heard. It does develop into a more traditional action cue toward the end with racing strings similar to those in Krull.

The songs aren't really that great, apart from Dreams to Dream, and it just seems that Horner isn't that great at writing musical-style songs from an animated film. In this case, the songs were composed entirely by Horner, whereas he had help for the original. Way Out West is a counterpart to the original There Are No Cats in America, but where that one was really quite good, this one is just a little bit too silly at times for my liking. However it (like all the others) isn't actually very long, so it's impact is somewhat negligible. The song version for Dreams to Dream has the same problem inherent in the film version of Somewhere Out There in that ten year old children just can't quite provide the required singing ability that the song needs, however it's not too sickening and the orchestral backing is very nice indeed. The Girl You Left Behind uses one of the Western themes that Horner created, although I feel that it doesn't translate that well into a song and falls into the same category as being just a bit on the silly side at times.

The rest of the score mixes comedic Western styling with Horner's typically expansive music that he always seems to create for animated films. The interweaving of the dozen or so main themes is done with typical aplomb. I find it interesting that many site Willow as being the most profuse score in terms of number of themes, but Fievel Goes West contains all the themes from the original, it also contains another half a dozen themes of its own. The final cue sums up all the major themes and ends with the sad violin solo that started the score, bringing it full circle. I would suggest that fans of the original would enjoy this score just as much since it contains many of the same elements but adds quite a lot more fun into the proceedings and touches on pretty much every Western music cliché, hoe-down fiddles, harmonica, plunked banjos as well as several other elements that Western fans are sure to spot!