![]() ![]() ![]() The best music on album actually comes towards the end, beginning with the extended “Pauly’s Theme”, which features a subtly romantic piano melody accompanied by emotional strings and woodwinds. Many of the cues are short and to the point, rarely allowing for any conventional thematic development or extended statements, but there are a couple of interesting cues: “Kaiko Shoots Arrow” is an oriental theme played for laughs “Jenny and Connor Meet and Spar” and “Jenny and Connor/Wedding Sex” are Thomas Newman-style urban pieces with guitars and offbeat percussion “Uncle Wayne’s Apparition” has a comedic jazzy feel with unusual use of a theremin “Ghost of Girlfriend Past” and “Ghost of Girlfriend Present” dips their toes into action music territory with low brass chords playing off the mischievous theremin motif “Leaving Before Dawn” has a pretty, bittersweet piano and woodwind theme “A Little Honesty” emerges from a quirky plucked electric guitar sequence into something a little more orchestrally meaningful, and so on and so forth. He uses a moderately-sized orchestra, a jazz percussion section, light guitars and synths, marimbas and other offbeat chimes, and a generally contemporary vibe to score this modern tale of love and redemption. Kent’s score is pleasant, light and airy, with a gentle romantic sweep that recalls the work of composers such as Alan Silvestri and David Newman, and their work in this genre. ![]() The film is directed by Mark Waters, co-stars Jennifer Garner, Breckin Meyer, Robert Forster and Anne Archer, and has an original score by Scottish-born composer Rolfe Kent. In life, Wayne was a player like Connor, but in death has seen the error of his ways now, in attempt to save his younger nephew’s nuptials, Wayne tells Connor that he will be visited by the “ghosts” of girlfriends past, present, and future, who will show him that true love, rather than casual sex, is the way to go. Of course, the lack of quality of the movie itself is not the composer's fault, and he is bound to obey his director, but the inappropriate music is just one more thing that makes Ghosts of Girlfriends Past a waste of time.A fun rom-com reworking of the classic Scrooge tale, Ghosts of Girlfriends Past stars Matthew McConaughey as Connor Mead, a love ‘em and leave ‘em serial monogamist who, while attempting to stop his younger brother’s wedding, is visited by the ghost of his dead uncle Wayne (Michael Douglas). Ghosts, in addition to being a broadly played comedy, is also nearly unwatchable junk, its only redeeming element being Michael Douglas' performance in a small part in which he does the best impersonation of Robert Evans since Dustin Hoffman's in Wag the Dog. Trouble is, the stakes aren't really high. Kent would blame his director, Mark Waters, who "wanted drama from this music, not just a romantic-comedy score but a sense that the stakes are high." Kent has accommodated him, providing orchestral music full of feeling with emotional highs and lows. Ghosts is a better score than 17 Again, particularly because it's a more consistent work than its scattershot partner, but, like 17 Again, it is hard to identify as music for a comedy. That's appropriate, since both scores were composed by Rolfe Kent, and he has taken a similar approach to each, in that he has taken his jobs way too seriously. Silva Screen Records released the soundtrack album for Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, a romantic comedy in which a contemporary womanizer gets his comeuppance in the manner of Ebenezer Scrooge, on the same day that it issued the soundtrack album for 17 Again, another rom-com with a magical element. ![]()
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