The Good: Good acting, Fun story, Excellent execution of plot, Fun characters
The Bad: Predictable and simple
The Basics: In a fun, if standard, romantic comedy, a washed-up pop star is given the chance to make music again and finds himself paired with a reclusive and reluctant poet.
For quite some time, I could not stand Hugh Grant. I wasn't too keen on Drew Barrymore either. Barrymore got off my list of actors I wouldn't watch fairly quickly, but I held onto the whole "Hugh Grant What's My Appeal?" joke from Family Guy. Then Grant was good in About A Boy (reviewed here!) and I cheered for him in Love Actually (reviewed here!). With Music And Lyrics, Grant is officially off my "tired of" list and into the category where I see his appeal.
'80's pop star Alex Fletcher, of the group Pop!, has volunteered to participate in a reality show for has-beens and finds himself regretting it. Enter Sophie, a young woman who enters Fletcher's life to water his plants. When Alex's agent, Chris, gets Alex a potential gig writing for one of the hottest pop stars in the world, Alex finds himself with a problem; when he was in Pop!, he wrote the music, while his partner, Colin, wrote the lyrics.
As it turns out, Sophie is quite the gifted lyricist and they soon begin to write music and songs together in a wholly predictable turn of events. So far from his previous limelight, Alex soon illustrates a complete willingness to sell out and fold, which Sophie immediately resents. And what looked like a promising relationship begins to crumble. Fast.
From the opening moments of Music And Lyrics, the film is fun and fairly obvious. Opening with the music video for Pop!'s biggest hit, "Pop Goes My Heart," writer-director Marc Lawrence recreates the schmaltz and utter cheesiness of '80's pop culture perfectly. Not just the hair and wardrobe, but the story style music video combined with the color scheme and the whole way everyone moves makes the viewer instantly believe in the nature and caliber of the group and Alex as an artist. And for those who did not live through the '80's, this sets the mood perfectly. (In the DVD bonus features, there is the unbroken music video and wonderful commentary featuring the behind-the-scenes production of the music video.)
So, from the beginning, Alex is a pretty obvious character, followed around by his agent. As far as the story goes, this puts a significant burden on the character of Sophie. Instead of being starstruck by Alex (one of the two obvious permutations for her character) - a role instead embodied by Sophie's sister Rhonda - Sophie enters the narrative as a young woman with significant damage in her past. Left by a prominent professor who used her story as a career-launching novel, Sophie is hesitant to write anything. Much of the early half of the film involves Alex simply drawing Sophie out of her isolation and reticence and that works nicely as one of the few things that sets Music And Lyrics apart from virtually every other romantic comedy.
And the film is funny, but it does not try so hard to be obviously funny, leaning more toward a dry wit throughout the film and highlighting the romantic aspects of the romantic comedy instead of the comedic ones. As a result, much of the film is produced with a real sense of being tongue-in-cheek, like the pokes at teen pop divas as embodied by Cora. Marc Lawrence wrote the script with a brilliant sense of character in keeping Alex entirely aware of his status as a fallen idol and thus keeping his willingness to sell out at the drop of a dime front and center.
Hugh Grant rises to the occasion beautifully to sell the role. Like his performance in American Dreamz, he plays a disgruntled member of the entertainment community who is displeased by his place in it. Grant is wonderful here in that niche, but he adds more heart to the role, making it distinctly different from the more smarmy performance in American Dreamz. Grant leads the cast with his performance in a way that makes his character breathe but never seem to overpower anyone else who is on screen with him.
Most often, he shares the screen with Drew Barrymore. Barrymore again reaches her potential by playing a somewhat eccentric, insular young woman and those types of roles seem to suit her well. The problem for Barrymore in Music And Lyrics is that we've seen that style performance from her before. She's good at it; it made her performance in Ever After (reviewed here!) something different from what she had done before and her performance in 50 First Dates (reviewed here!) plausible (the the very least). In this film, she simply stays in the niche she pioneered for herself several films ago. In other words, she does not so much give the audience anything new as she does provide them with more of the same to enjoy.
And because Music And Lyrics is not terribly serious or sophisticated fare anyway, it works out just fine. Marc Lawrence, though, gives better than drivel - which is more than most romantic comedy writers do. In Sophie he provides a chance to explore the difficulties of trusting people which is a topic seldom tackled seriously in romantic comedies. Lawrence does it well and his insistence on a slow evolution for Sophie raises the script and what is shown on screen up above the average film, even if barely.
But most of all, Music And Lyrics is just a fun film. On DVD it comes with some commentary, trailers, the music video and a decent commentary track that is almost as enjoyable as the regular film. Anyone who likes a decent romantic comedy and anyone who has a secret passion for the 1980's will find something to enjoy in this film.
For other works by Marc Lawrence, check out my reviews of:
Did You Hear About The Morgans?
Miss Congeniality
The Out-Of-Towners
Forces Of Nature
7/10
To check out how this film stacks up against the others I have reviewed, check out my Movie Review Index Page where the reviews are organized from Best To Worst!
© 2012, 2007 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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