Music & Lyrics - a review
saw the movie recently, decided to post my thoughts (actually i wrote a review of it for one of the newspapers here and it got published - yay! - and i thought i'd share!) any and all thoughts & ramblings welcome! :)
Music & Lyrics (starring Hugh Grant & Drew Barrymore)
Reviewing romantic comedies is a difficult thing to do; judge them too critically and you may be told "But they are supposed to be light and fluffy and not exactly intellectually challenging". Don’t take it seriously enough and you may end up recommending to people to waste two hours of their lives, which they will never get back, on mind-numbing sap.
Music & Lyrics presents one with a similar sort of dilemma. While I wouldn’t go so far as calling it mind-numbing sap, the movie does leave a lot to be desired.
Hugh Grant is Alex Fletcher; a 1980’s has-been pop star whose current life is but a shadow of the glory days when his band ‘Pop!’ was all the rage. (The opening sequence of the movie is actually a video of a song by the band and it has to be one of the funniest scenes in the entire movie!) Now while he makes the rounds at malls, high school reunions and amusement parks serenading middle aged housewives and driving them mad with his hip shaking moves, his band mate sits pretty in Hollywood as a multi-millionaire with extremely successful solo projects under his belt. Alex finally gets a lucky break when the hottest artist on the current pop scene, Cora Corman (think pre-head shaving Britany with a touch of Christina) asks him to write a song for her, a duet, which if she likes he would get to perform with her at her sold-out concert in Madison Square Gardens.
Only problem is he is a terrible lyricist and hasn’t actually written a song in years! Enter Sophie Fisher (Drew Barrymore) his clumsy, quirky “substitute” plant lady who impresses Alex with her songwriting skills when she mumbles off a few lines to a melody he’s playing while she is watering his plants.
What follows is a lot of "But I can’t write songs" and "Yes you can" mixed in with the ‘opening up to each other’ scenes through which we discover Sophie’s back story, all the while the perfect pop love song gets written. A word of warning: even if you don’t like pop music the songs have a tendency to crawl inside your head and refuse to leave.
There is no denying that these movies require some suspension of disbelief however, contrived storylines and tepid chemistry between the two romantic leads cannot be overlooked. Even the ‘big fight’ between Sophie and Alex falls completely flat when it did have the potential to be more powerful. And the ‘grand romantic gesture’ leading to the reunion of the lovers and the ‘happily ever after’ well…lets just say a stronger ending would have left a better impression!
Hugh Grant has the market cornered on playing the disarmingly charming and funny leading man in romantic comedies and he is spot on in this one too. He is totally convincing as Alex and he leaves you thinking no one could have played the role better. Drew Barrymore on the other hand was quite disappointing. Known for her comedic roles one expected a lot more from her but she left one under whelmed. There were times when she was just annoying and you would have been forgiven for thinking ‘if these two don’t end up together it might actually be a good thing!’
The movie’s only redeeming factor is that it knows it’s a big hunk of cheese and it doesn’t pretend to be otherwise. That and the witty one-liners from Hugh. The movie has its moments but they are few and far between.
Recommended if you are absolutely in the mood for a romantic comedy and have completely exhausted the list of all the decent ones released over the last year.
Btw anyone seen anything worth recommending lately? i've been wanting to watch a good movie but i just don't know what! any suggesstions would be much appreciated :)
Music & Lyrics (starring Hugh Grant & Drew Barrymore)
Reviewing romantic comedies is a difficult thing to do; judge them too critically and you may be told "But they are supposed to be light and fluffy and not exactly intellectually challenging". Don’t take it seriously enough and you may end up recommending to people to waste two hours of their lives, which they will never get back, on mind-numbing sap.
Music & Lyrics presents one with a similar sort of dilemma. While I wouldn’t go so far as calling it mind-numbing sap, the movie does leave a lot to be desired.
Hugh Grant is Alex Fletcher; a 1980’s has-been pop star whose current life is but a shadow of the glory days when his band ‘Pop!’ was all the rage. (The opening sequence of the movie is actually a video of a song by the band and it has to be one of the funniest scenes in the entire movie!) Now while he makes the rounds at malls, high school reunions and amusement parks serenading middle aged housewives and driving them mad with his hip shaking moves, his band mate sits pretty in Hollywood as a multi-millionaire with extremely successful solo projects under his belt. Alex finally gets a lucky break when the hottest artist on the current pop scene, Cora Corman (think pre-head shaving Britany with a touch of Christina) asks him to write a song for her, a duet, which if she likes he would get to perform with her at her sold-out concert in Madison Square Gardens.
Only problem is he is a terrible lyricist and hasn’t actually written a song in years! Enter Sophie Fisher (Drew Barrymore) his clumsy, quirky “substitute” plant lady who impresses Alex with her songwriting skills when she mumbles off a few lines to a melody he’s playing while she is watering his plants.
What follows is a lot of "But I can’t write songs" and "Yes you can" mixed in with the ‘opening up to each other’ scenes through which we discover Sophie’s back story, all the while the perfect pop love song gets written. A word of warning: even if you don’t like pop music the songs have a tendency to crawl inside your head and refuse to leave.
There is no denying that these movies require some suspension of disbelief however, contrived storylines and tepid chemistry between the two romantic leads cannot be overlooked. Even the ‘big fight’ between Sophie and Alex falls completely flat when it did have the potential to be more powerful. And the ‘grand romantic gesture’ leading to the reunion of the lovers and the ‘happily ever after’ well…lets just say a stronger ending would have left a better impression!
Hugh Grant has the market cornered on playing the disarmingly charming and funny leading man in romantic comedies and he is spot on in this one too. He is totally convincing as Alex and he leaves you thinking no one could have played the role better. Drew Barrymore on the other hand was quite disappointing. Known for her comedic roles one expected a lot more from her but she left one under whelmed. There were times when she was just annoying and you would have been forgiven for thinking ‘if these two don’t end up together it might actually be a good thing!’
The movie’s only redeeming factor is that it knows it’s a big hunk of cheese and it doesn’t pretend to be otherwise. That and the witty one-liners from Hugh. The movie has its moments but they are few and far between.
Recommended if you are absolutely in the mood for a romantic comedy and have completely exhausted the list of all the decent ones released over the last year.
Btw anyone seen anything worth recommending lately? i've been wanting to watch a good movie but i just don't know what! any suggesstions would be much appreciated :)