MUSIC AND LYRICS
Written and Directed by Marc Lawrence
CAST: Hugh Grant, Drew Barrymore, Kristen Johnson, Brad Garrett, Haley Bennett, Matthew Morrison, Campbell Scott
Since Valentine’s Day was wiped out for us this past week (Feb. 14, 2007) with horrendous weather, my wife and I decided to make Saturday our Valentine’s Day celebration. With another couple, we started our evening at MUSIC AND LYRICS, which turned out to be the perfect movie for our mood and spirits. We met other friends at the theatre who also loved it.
Marc Lawrence has started to carve out a respectable niche as a writer-director of extremely entertaining romantic comedies. Out of his past four films (MISS CONGENIALITY, TWO WEEKS NOTICE, MISS CONGENIALITY 2: ARMED & FABULOUS and MUSIC AND LYRICS), MISS CONGENIALITY 2 has been his only misstep. MUSIC AND LYRICS is a delightful return to form.
Sometimes you want to see a film that challenges you to think about life and the world about you. At other times, you want to forget about the real world and visit a world that is what you would like it to be. MUSIC AND LYRICS fills the later bill. It has many charms, not the least of which is a tantalizing chemistry between Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore. Both sparkle in their roles and, surprisingly, work extremely well together.
Lawrence’s strength in his best work is to build likeable, detailed characters around unusual events that bring people together as well as into collision. The humor comes out of the characters and their foibles as they try to cope with a nearly impossible situation. Many acclaimed films today have characters that are often truly repellant. There’s no character that takes you inside the story and helps you empathize with the situation. My wife and several other friends are repeatedly saying they disliked a movie because everyone in it “…was so self-involved and truly unlikable.” MUSIC AND LYRICS characters have no such problem. Both leads are charming and you find yourself rooting for them both.
Lawrence built the first MISS CONGENIALITY and TWO WEEKS NOTICE around Sandra Bullock’s likable charm and goofy inner being. In MISS CONGENIALITY, she romantically danced around a developing relationship with Benjamin Bratt and bounced off hilarious turns by Candace Bergen and Michael Caine. In TWO WEEKS NOTICE, Hugh Grant’s flighty egomaniac was a wonderful foil for her no-nonsense lady.
In MUSIC AND LYRICS, Barrymore has the Bullock-like role as Sophie Fisher, a lovable eccentric who keeps people’s plants for them and works for her family’s weight loss company. Grant is back to playing the lovable but dithering man-child. He is Alex Fletcher, a washed up 80s pop star/composer/lyricist whose partner left him behind for superstar status. Meanwhile, he developed an inferiority complex that left him wallowing in engagements that started out with Six Flags and Knottsberry Farm and now are dwindling down to Bah Mitzvahs and class reunions as fewer and fewer people remember him. Grant gives the character many fresh turns and several levels that one might not expect from a light comedy as this. He seems to revel in all the pop songs he has to sing while he “shakes his hips” in his signature “pop concert” move.
Fletcher has a chance to redeem himself as a songwriter when a young new female superstar (modeled on a cross between Brittany Spears and Madonna) wants him to write a new song for her next record and concert tour. The trick is that he only has three days to write the song and he needs a lyricist. While Alex is trying to work with an “edgy” lyricist (Jason Antoon in a funny cameo), Sophie (Barrymore) comes in to water the plants. As Alex struggles with finding something that works in Antoon’s lyrics, Sophie easily comes up with solution after solution. Fletcher becomes convinced that Sophie is the only one to help him get the song written in three days. The rest of the story is a romantic chase built around the deadline of getting the song done. It has pleasant and surprising twists and turns that never pander to the situation and always stay true to the characters.
Lawrence and his cast put together many wonderful sequences. It starts out with a gentle but effervescent satire on pop music videos from the 1980s that’s a lot of fun. There are amusing looks at Fletcher performing for a high school reunion and the daytime crowd at an area amusement park. Brad Garrett and Kristen Johnson lend warm, comic support as Fletcher’s manager and Sophie’s sister. Haley Bennett is spot on as the teen superstar who is pushing mysticism and Hinduism into her sex filled concert numbers. The fun continues through the credits as they use MTV pop-ups to update on what happened to the characters after the film’s ending.
There are no big surprises along the way. But MUSIC AND LYRICS is pleasant company and a lovely respite from cold weather, depressing politics and cabin fever.