• Composed by Rolfe Kent
• Silva Screen SILCD1295 / 2009 / 43:44

A romantic comedy with Matthew McConaughey and Jennifer Garner (not to mention “And Michael Douglas as Uncle Wayne”), Ghosts of Girlfriends Past is a Scrooge-like tale of a man being guided by his past, present and future girlfriends as he aims to sleep with as many women as possible.  I don’t suppose Germaine Greer will be asking for the Blu-Ray for Christmas.Scoring is Rolfe Kent, no stranger to romcoms – and indeed this is the second such score released in very quick succession by Silva Screen, after 17 Again.  This score is a little more standard than that one – and just as enjoyable.  It starts in the traditional way, a lovely piano melody with strings; later on in the album, of course guitars enter the mix (a romantic comedy score without guitars!?)

A romantic comedy score with a theremin (or at least a synthesised approximation) is a little less common, so the slightly spooky music occasionally (presumably for scenes of haunting) is welcome; and the second half of the album does branch out in other directions from the romcom template a few times, with some nice, brassy dramatic music and some particularly lovely performances of the main theme.  In the mould of one of the themes in John Barry’s Until September, that theme is this score’s main asset and makes it a score worth hearing, even though it is unlikely to blow anyone’s socks off.  The main drawback is the succession of very short cues which don’t really do very much – there are 44 minutes of music here spread over 24 cues, including two which last under 30 seconds.  Their congregation towards the start of the album might put people off before it’s even really begun. ***

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