A Christmas Carol soundtrack. That Ebenezer Scrooge, what a downright nasty piece of work. No, we’re not talking the ‘before’ Scrooge here. Nothing wrong at all with being a tight-fisted miser. If we’d had a few more of them then maybe the global economy wouldn’t currently be sloping around like a hamster that’s swallowed a capful of bleach, hacking and retching as it feebly attempts to fend off the icy touch of the Grim Reaper. We instead refer to old Ebenezer after he’s tangled with the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come. Once he’s performed his volte-face and is leaping around like a prime candidate for the loony bin, supposedly in some twisted spirit of compassion and generosity. Scrooge instantly transmuted into the epitome of the nauseatingly chirpy reformed sinner, like the Hollywood star who has ingested every pill, powder and poison under the sun for ten years, only to suddenly get clean, and give sanctimonious interview after sanctimonious interview as to how soul-ravaging all that drinking and drugging was, and that playing softball with his kids is now his only high. It’s not enough for him to undergo his personal revelation quietly, then go home and watch Lost. Oh no, he’s got it to go shout it from the bloody rooftops, making sure everyone knows just what a swell guy he is. Jerk.

Flush as they are with the spirit of disingenuous hypocrisy, there is surely nothing better than Christmas carols to soundtrack the antics of such an abominable do-gooder, and Sweet Lord of Heaven if Alan Silvestri’s score for (natch) A Christmas Carol isn’t laden with them like poor old Santa struggling under his big black sack. Nary a track passes by without Silvestri slipping in a few dreary bars of some traditionally seasonal dirge, and this tendency is indicative of the veteran composer’s imagination-impoverished approach to his umpteenth collaboration with director Robert Zemeckis. Anyone hoping for a theme as evocative and essential as Silvestri’s offering from Back to the Future is going to be left as disappointed as a kid waking up on Christmas morning and finding a lump of coal forlornly waiting for them under the tree. Or a really crappy present – a copy of X-Men Origins: Wolverine for example.

It’s not that A Christmas Carol is an awful soundtrack. Indeed, it might work perfectly satisfactorily when deployed in tandem with the wacky onscreen antics of a gaggle of CGI Jim Carreys. Possibly. But, when judged as a standalone listen, Silvestri’s orchestrations are predictable and pedestrian, with closer God Bless Everyone by tenor Andrea Bocelli summing up the gaping chasm between intended and actual effect. Supposedly a culminating flourish of utopian goodwill, this final track actually more resembles a trawler frantically trying to foghorn away an approaching oil tanker. It’s an overblown honk to blow your trousers off, and certainly not in a good way.

You can’t get it on cd but you can download it as mp3s here

Disney’s A Christmas Carol Soundtrack (OST) – Track Listing
1. A Christmas Carol Main Title – Alan Silvestri
2. Scrooge Counts Money – Alan Silvestri
3. Marley’s Ghost Visits Scrooge – Alan Silvestri
4. The Ghost of Christmas Past – Alan Silvestri
5. Let Us See Another Christmas – Alan Silvestri
6. Flight to Fezziwigs – Alan Silvestri
7. First Waltz – Alan Silvestri
8. Another Idol Has Replaced Me – Alan Silvestri
9. Touch My Robe – Alan Silvestri
10. The Clock Tower – Alan Silvestri
11. Carriage Chase – Alan Silvestri
12. Old Joe and Mrs. Dilber – Alan Silvestri
13. This Dark Chamber – Alan Silvestri
14. None of Us Will Ever Forget – Alan Silvestri
15. Who Was That Lying Dead? – Alan Silvestri
16. I’m Still Here – Alan Silvestri
17. Ride On My Good Man – Alan Silvestri
18. God Bless Us Everyone – Andrea Bocelli

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