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Film

Love hits a sour note

Music and Lyrics is that rare romantic comedy that lacks romance and comedy.

By Marty Clear
Published February 15, 2007

ADVERTISEMENT [Warner Bros.] Drew Barrymore and Hugh Grant star in the romantic comedy that is already released nationwide.

When you go see a romantic comedy - especially one released on Valentine's Day - you feel entitled to some romance and some comedy.

Music and Lyrics, which opened Wednesday, falls short on both.

Writer-director Marc Lawrence he wrote Miss Congeniality and directed Two Weeks Notice offers a soupcon of witty one-liners for Hugh Grant, but they're diluted by a torrent of not-so-clever lines and situations.

And any romance Lawrence provided was suffocated by the abject lack of chemistry between Grant and Drew Barrymore, and by the utter charmlessness of Barrymore's character and performance.

It's kind of a shame, because the movie gets off to an appealing start. We see an '80s-style music video, obviously inspired by the Wham! song Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go. It features a young-looking Grant and a cohort, sporting silly coifs and shaking their booties.

Grant's character, Alex Fletcher, is obviously patterned after Andrew Ridgeley ("the other guy in Wham!"). His band broke up, his buddy went on to stardom and Grant's character went on to obscurity.

Lawrence apparently depleted his creative cache with the premise and the video (which is pretty funny).

The present-day Alex is contracted to compose a song for a megastar pop princess, but he is unable to write lyrics. A horribly contrived circumstance leads Sophie Fisher (Barrymore) to his Manhattan apartment.

She's subbing for the woman who waters his plants every day. (He seems to have three, one of which is plastic and one a cactus.) When Sophie mutters a couple of lines of doggerel, Alex is bowled over and persuades her to become his lyricist.

Sophie's most endearing qualities are a profound lack of self-confidence and a neurotic fear of infection, but for some reason Alex (who is still pursued by adoring female fans from the old days) falls deeply in love with her in a few days.

Even Lawrence doesn't seem to care too much about these people or this movie. He doesn't bother to provide any reason to hope Alex and Sophie get together. He offers almost no obstacles for them to overcome, and the only subplot he comes up with is a totally irrelevant story about Sophie's boorish ex (the wonderful Campbell Scott, wasted in a tiny role).

Lawrence even forgoes the opportunity to provide some texture to the film with New York City locales. The only reason we even know this movie is set in Manhattan is a few establishing shots of the skyline.

Besides the general malaise of the film, the major disappointment is the songwriting of the formidable Adam Schlesinger from Fountains of Wayne. His lyrics are banal and his tunes lack the infectiousness he's known for.

Marty Clear can be reached at mclear@tampabay.rr.com.

Review

Music and Lyrics

Grade: D+

Writer/director: Marc Lawrence

Cast: Hugh Grant, Drew Barrymore, Brad Garrett, Campbell Scott, Kristen Johnston

Rating: PG-13; some sexual content

Running time: 96 minutes

[Last modified February 14, 2007, 20:29:04]