Music and Lyrics

There’s probably not a single scene in Music and Lyrics that you won’t see coming. From the first moment Drew Barrymore shows up at Hugh Grant’s apartment behaving oddly and looking adorable, you can pretty much already see him declaring his love for her in the final act. It’s just a matter of time before they get together, break up for some ridiculous reason, and then ultimately realize that they belong together. It’s all very clear and simple, but its delivery warms itself up to you enough that you can’t really hate it. In fact, the greatest strength of the film is that despite all the predictability and all the clichés, it remains utterly, annoyingly likable.

Hugh Grant stars as Alex Fletcher, a washed up 80s pop singer formerly of a band called POP! which was responsible for big hits such as the bluntly titled “Pop Goes My Heart.” When the band disbanded, Fletcher became a washed up loser forced to play county fairs and high school reunions, but now, 15 years later, even those gigs are drying up. He’s given the chance of a lifetime when Cora Corman, a vacuous Britney Spears-esque pop singer who likes to writhe beneath a Buddha while chanting “Shanti! Shanti!” (Her take on spirituality), offers him the job of writing her a new song as part of a publicity stunt designed to show her love of “retro” music. Fletcher has never been a lyricist and after a botched attempt at collaborating with several contemporary pros (an Avril Lavigne colleague tries to convince him that the phrase “real hot bitch” works well in a love song), Fletcher improvises by employing the clever girl who waters his plants (Barrymore). He calls her a “born lyricist” and the two set out to write a song, have witty banter, fall in love, and do all the sorts of things characters in romantic comedies do.

Drew Barrymore and Hugh Grant can both deliver off-hand slapstick with ease, but it’s the above average conversational musings of writer/director Marc Lawrence that carry this film from beginning to end. His deviant sense of humor and unnatural buy enjoyable style of surreal, sly dialogue make looking and listening to the film’s unbelievable characters at least fun even if they are in no way enlightening. This is a far from pitch perfect film, though, and it often stumbles into utter stupidity devoid of any redeeming qualities. It has bland moments, useless moments, and even a few frustrating moments. These moments do arrive every now and then, but for the most part this is the best kind of fluff picture: light, unremarkable, but crafted with a comedic grace and the decency to know its place in the grand scheme of things. It’s a film that simply makes you smile while humming hideously obnoxious songs you wish you could get out of your head.

Grade: B-