Details
Movie Description
Alex Fletcher (Hugh Grant) is a cynical and self-deprecating former pop idol (the hilarious opening video introduces his '80s new wave band Pop!) who is now playing the nostalgia circuit, but has maintained enough dignity to turn down an appearance on a "Battle of the '80s Has-Beens" TV reality show. Sophie Fisher (Drew Barrymore) is a gifted writer with deep inferiority issues who's been hired to water Fletcher's plants, and ends up becoming his emergency fill-in lyricist for a song he needs to deliver to teen queen singer Cora (Haley Bennett) in four days.
Despite this contrived "cute meet," the film, to its great credit, deftly avoids many possible rom-com tropes in favor of organic, character-driven conflicts and comic situations. Alex and Sophie fall in love, struggle over their song, and wrestle with their own respective resistance to romantic happiness, while simultaneously coping with the frustrations of the creative process and the demands of the music industry. The two leads (aided by great comic sidekick turns from Brad Garrett and Kristen Johnston) manage to pull all this off with a lightness of touch that makes the characters' vulnerability appealing and not pathetic. The original songs by Adam Schlesinger (the go-to guy for singer-songwriter film music) is charming and catchy.
Industry Reviews
3 stars out of 4 -- "Hugh Grant's has-been pop star in MUSIC AND LYRICS is the ideal fit for the actor's trademark low-key, self-deprecating wit."
USA Today - Claudia Puig (02/16/2007)
"MUSIC AND LYRICS includes some great throwback faux music videos." -- Grade: B-
Entertainment Weekly - Lisa Schwarzbaum (02/23/2007)
"The couple work well, with Barrymore's more grounded performance enabling Grant, whose role is business as usual, to steal most of the laughs....There is an understated poetry of sorts at work in the film."
Sight and Sound - Patrick Fahy (04/01/2007)
"Grant and Barrymore's] chemistry and comic repartee evoke the lightheartedness of screwball romantic classics of the Thirties and Forties."
Film Comment - Film Comment Staff (05/01/2007)
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