Home Alone – soundtrack review

We all know the movie Home Alone. Whether it evokes feelings of nostalgia and love or pure dread at the thought of sitting through that bloody film for the hundredth time – we all know it. And by the way, I only have feelings of nostalgia and love and perhaps even borderline obsession.

But whilst we enjoy discussing the traps, the tarantula and Macaulay Culkin’s heroin addiction, hardly anyone ever mentions the soundtrack – which is actually really good.

Years ago, before I started a blog, I used to frequent the Yahoo Answers movie section. My username was ‘emjob’ if any of you used to be a reg too? Oh sorry, that means Regular Contributor – in geek speak. Anyway, someone asked one day what everyone’s favourite John Williams score was (excluding Jaws and Star Wars). Pretty much everyone said Schindler’s List (borrrring) and I know I was the only loser to pick Somewhere in My Memory from Home Alone. But check this out – I got Best Answer! Okay you probably had to be there, but it was a mild victory against the film snobs. And like most places on the internet,  Y\A had a lot of film snobs.

The Home Alone soundtrack CD is a bit of a treat actually because it features the wonderful scores written by John Williams – but it also includes the pop songs as well.

Often soundtracks are one or the other but we’re quite spoilt in this instance by having both included. My favourite is White Christmas by The Drifters (aftershave scene) but Please Come Home for Christmas (selling her earrings for a plane ticket) is fun to sing along to in an exaggerated voice.

The only song not featured sadly, is Brenda Lee’s Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree (the puppet party). I guess it cost too much but three out of four isn’t bad – the other song included is Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas. Of course!

The scores are all brilliant, some sweet and some dramatic. Some sad and some comical. It’s also easy picking out where in the film they play – this is the bit where he goes through Buzz’s stuff. This is the burglar music…. And this plays when he steals the toothbrush!

“Herb! I got a question here about a toothbrush”

And they have some great titles too – ‘Scammed By A Kindergartner’ and ‘Stop That Kid!’ being my personal favourites. But of course the best track is ‘Somewhere in My Memory’.

Now I’ve had this CD in the car a lot recently and the other night had the most amazing opportunity to play the ‘running through the airport’ music. My boyfriend and I had four minutes to get to the last shop in town that was still open for another four minutes.

And yes I know it was probably wasting time putting the CD in and finding the track (my boyfriend was furious HAHAHAHA) but boy was it worth it. The little things eh?