Did you hear the one about the dashing movie star who fell from grace and then made it all OK?
As the story goes, the star, who was known for his comic timing, accidentally nudged his car's brake pedal while being serviced by a scary-looking prostitute. This caused the car's brake lights to flash, attracting the attention of the local cops, who promptly hauled the movie star off to jail and beamed his mug shot around the world. The star was disgraced and duly chastised — most notably by the glamorous celebrity to whom he was engaged at the time — but, after numerous appearances on the talk show circuit (where he exhibited exactly the right balance of sincere remorse and self-deprecating wit), he eventually triumphed and won back the hearts and minds of the free world.
In a more perfect universe, that's the date movie that would be playing in theaters this week. Instead, I'm sorry to have to report, we're stuck with a Hugh Grant project of a less satisfying sort. As mainstream romantic comedies go, Music and Lyrics probably isn't an entirely inappropriate reward for anyone whose idea of a romantic Valentine's Day rendezvous is time spent in a megaplex. But, frankly, that date movie involving the scary hooker is sounding better to me all the time.
In Music and Lyrics, Grant stars as Alex Fletcher, a self-described "happy has-been" who enjoyed brief fame in the '80s as a member of a Wham-like synth band and now finds himself reduced to playing high school reunions and county fairs. Drew Barrymore, assuming a role that a few years ago would have gone to Meg Ryan (and before that, perhaps to Diane Keaton), plays a lovably neurotic ditz named Sophie. Alex and Sophie meet cute within the film's first 10 minutes (she pricks a finger on his cactus), then wind up spending time together when she reluctantly agrees to help him write the words for his big comeback song.
Under pressure to produce said song within a matter of days (the deadline has something to do with a demanding teen diva, not that it particularly matters), the seemingly mismatched characters ensconce themselves in Alex's pad for the duration — and it's pretty much a given that by the time their brief artistic collaboration comes to its conclusion, romantic sparks will have flown. It's in the nature of movies to condense time whenever possible, of course, but in the hothouse bubble of Music and Lyrics' set-up, Alex and Sophie are veritable fruit flies of love. Their relationship, once revealed, flourishes with all the prepackaged, just-add-water gusto of a packet of sea monkeys.
Grant gamely shuffles about as a character appreciably nicer and less twitchy than the charming predators we're accustomed to him playing. Frankly, though, he's just not all that interesting without some sort of an edge and neither is the movie. Music and Lyrics tinkers with a few elements that set it ever so slightly apart from the rest of the pack — the whole movie revolves around the development of a single song, for instance, like some perverse reconfiguring of Jean-Luc Godard's Sympathy for the Devil as a chick flick — but at root this is pretty basic boy-meets-girl stuff. It's not quite Two Weeks Notice pointless (another rom-com starring Grant and from the same director, Marc Lawrence), but it's certainly nowhere near Four Weddings and a Funeral smart, or even Notting Hill clever.
The obligatory smattering of eccentric sidekicks are on hand, but none of them really adds much to the proceedings: the needy, divorced agent; the plus-sized relative who runs a weight-loss center; the hack musician trying hard to channel Jack Black; the egotistical ex-lover (Campbell Scott) who broke the female lead's heart and left her an emotional mess. The movie plays out pretty much exactly as we expect it to, right down to an 11th-hour development when Grant's character appears to be selling out by adding a trendy beat and some sexed-up moaning to his song (as if a musician wiggling his ass on the theme park circuit had any scruples to betray), and an even more absurd 11th-hour crisis created for no reason other than to give the couple's relationship something to rebound from.
Still, Grant and Barrymore are both appealing performers (even though their chemistry together doesn't exactly set the world on fire), and just the presence of their company is enough to make Music and Lyrics a bearable experience. Barrymore's comedic chops are surprisingly impressive (although there's nothing here remotely as funny as her recent appearance on Saturday Night Live as an over-caffeinated job applicant), and she manages to give full rein to her character's quirks without turning her into a complete cartoon. For his part, Grant underplays nicely, allowing even the lamest lines a measure of droll dignity (although, with a face that's beginning to drop into the first stages of McCartney-esque freefall, the guy's really getting a bit too old to be doing this tousle-haired man-child shtick).
Curiously enough, the best thing about Music and Lyrics isn't its romantic dalliances, but its digs at the music industry. The movie doesn't seem completely at home rooting around in our current musical moment — jokes about a faux-spiritual Madonna-Christina-Britney megastar fall more than a little flat ("Buddhism in a thong," grumbles one character) — but the spoofs of '80s musical "culture" (a pretty big target, granted) are pretty much spot on. It's a pity there isn't more here like the opening credit sequence, a wonderfully cheesy video of Alex's old band in all their Spandau/Flock of Seagulls/Soft Cell glory, singing their horribly banal yet insidiously catchy hit, "Pop Goes My Heart." You'll rue the day it first lodged in your brain.
The filmmakers must have known how good their fake video is, because by the end of the movie they've recycled it in its entirety. Lazy filmmaking, sure, just like most of Music and Lyrics, but also one more example (however unintentional) of how pop really will eat itself.
This article appears in Feb 14-20, 2007.