• Composed by William Ross
• Momentum RLP / 2014 / 30m

A Hallmark Hall of Fame tv movie romance, In My Dreams stars Katharine McPhee and Mike Vogel as a pair of singletons looking for love and finding it (wait for it…) in their dreams.  Director Kenny Leon has worked with composer William Ross (on the Steel Magnolias remake a couple of years ago) and they team up once again for this fairly well-received project.  Ross’s lovely score pushes all the buttons you might expect it to, beginning immediately in the charming main theme which opens the album, strings and piano and guitar and a sweet melody.  “First Dream” then introduces the second main idea, a slightly detached (but still romantic) piano line against the strings, a little like Thomas Newman at his most melancholic.

In “Third Dream” there’s a lilting guitar solo which is very attractive.  Admittedly sugar levels are rather high but I guess that’s to be expected in a project like this.  Later in the same cue, another new theme is heard, again for guitar, and it’s a little like a romantic variant on Ennio Morricone’s famous (and oft-imitated) “Falls” theme from The Mission.  Nobody – not even me – expects to hear anything groundbreaking in the score for a romantic tv movie and so it is little surprise that, for all its charms, this is a score which sounds so familiar despite being new.  It does its job completely, it’s full of charm, it’s a very pleasant way of spending half an hour in fact, but don’t expect fireworks.

Rating: ***

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