MOVIE MUSIC UK

Original Review by Jonathan Broxton

A smash hit seasonal comedy starring Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon, Four Christmases is very much a festive flick for the new millennium, as it follows the fortunes of a couple who have to spend their holiday season visiting their four parents – Robert Duvall, Sissy Spacek, Jon Voight and Mary Steenburgen – all of whom are divorced, and who bring their own problems and peculiarities to the already hectic lives of their children, most notably in the form of various siblings – Jon Favreau, Kristin Chenoweth and country star Tim McGraw.

The widely-available commercial soundtrack CD features the usual roster of wintry favorites – Perry Como singing “Home For the Holidays”, Ferrante & Teciher’s “Sleigh Ride”, Dean Martin and Bing Crosby crooning “Baby It’s Cold Outside”, “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” and “White Christmas”, and so on and so forth. You get the idea.

Composer Alex Wurman’s original score only exists as a brief promo distributed by his publicist, copies of which may be available on the secondary market. There’s little to distinguish it from the dozens of other yuletide scores which are released at this time of year, although some of the cues do have some highlights: the two “Jump Jump” pieces are unexpectedly harsh action sequences, the conclusive “Alone Time” has a pretty, slightly bittersweet piano theme, and “Airport to Howard’s” suffers from an acute case of Nutcrackeritis, but the rest is the usual assortment of charming orchestral pieces with prancing strings, sleigh bells, and the whimsical comic caper music than usually accompanies films like these.

It’s all very lightweight and unassuming, but enjoyable in its way, although at just a hair over 13 minutes in length it’s not something I would ever go out of my way to acquire unless I had a deep-seated need to hear Wurman’s instrumental arrangement of Irving Berlin in the main titles.

Rating: **½

Track Listing:

• Main Titles (0:51)
• On the Couch (1:09)
• Mistletoe to Marilyn’s (0:52)
• Jump Jump Part I (1:19)
• Back Bedroom Boundaries Speech (1:11)
• Airport to Howard’s (1:23)
• Roof (2:10)
• To Paula’s (1:23)
• Jump Jump Part II (0:54)
• Alone Time (1:53)

Running Time: 13 minutes 11 seconds

Promo (2008)