Horner's last score to be officially released in 2001 is quite enjoyable. Personally, I like the sweet simplistic melodies and enjoyable musical ideas basically from start to finish. What is mostly so enjoyable about the score is that it is nice and soft-spoken, yet somehow driving, so the listener has a perpetual feeling of interest in the sounds that Horner can get out of his orchestra. Enough about the music though. All I really have to say is that this is "another Bicentennial Man" and everyone knows *exactly* what to expect.

What can really be discussed, and this is why I truly recommend this CD, is the extra "enhanced" portion. Normally I always complain about this sort of thing, but in this case, not only is there plenty of good material in the extras, it is still a nice, long CD release. Over seventy minutes, in fact, so there's little to complain about. What is great about this CD is the nifty Horner interview that comes with it. Well, two interviews actually. One is a little video segment in which Horner explains his approach to scoring a film, which incidentally, explains a lot about his borrowings (he looks for colors and emotions rather than musical subtextures and applies music that he already knows to work with the imagery). The other is a text interview that is interesting, and then there's also a cool text chat with Ron Howard. It's true that the enhanced CD starts up automatically, but I don't mind that much since I don't normally listen to music on my computer and the stuff is so cool anyway. And, yes, Horner has grown a beard. I wonder if he's gonna keep it.

I think by now that I've wasted enough of your time with this review. The only other thing worth talking about is the song sung by Charlotte Church at the end, which is one of Horner's better songs since it isn't so "pop". In any case, Horner fans should pick up this CD. It's a good one.