Two Funny Bits; Otherwise, The Ruination of a Perfect Premise

Rating: 3/10 (18 February 2007)

There are two funny bits in "Music and Lyrics." The first is the opening credits. Hugh Grant plays a pop star in a take-off on a music video from 1984. It's very sweet and funny, and captures the music videos of that era.
The second funny bit is Halley Bennett as Cora Corman, a teen-s1ut music sensation, similar to Britney Spears.
The rest of the movie is the ruination of a perfect romantic comedy premise: Sophie, a deep, soulful poet who publishes in literary magazines (Drew Barrymore) writes lyrics for Alex, an aging 80s pop star trying to make a comeback (Hugh Grant).
The script is a sloppy, nearly incoherent mess.
Sophie, as all female romantic comedy stars these days, is both mentally retarded and mentally ill. In spite of repeated communications of this simple idea, she can't figure out that when you enter a musician's house, you don't put your heavy handbag on his grand piano. She gets a cactus spine in her finger and pleads for major surgery. She *crawls across a restaurant floor* because she can't face a restaurant patron.
There's more. Sophie waters plants for a living, but she can't even water a plant correctly. She waters the sofa instead; she waters a plastic plant. She pours coffee onto the kitchen counter when trying to pour coffee into a cup.
If she were in your kindergarten class, you'd give her the *really big blocks* to play with.
For *this* Alex, Hugh Grant, falls in love with her? The same Hugh Grant who fell in love with the regal Andie McDowell, who was NOT an idiot, in "Four Weddings and a Funeral"? And why do all women in romantic comedies these days have to be complete idiots, anyway? And for their idiocy alone men fall in love with them? What does this say about how Hollywood views women? Drew Barrymore, who plays Sophie, is Drew Barrymore. She doesn't act; she doesn't perform. She is just ... the very same Drew Barrymore you've seen on dozens of talk shows. Perky, cute, dimpled; cute, perky, dimpled; perky, cute -- you get the idea.
Hey, with a name like "Barrymore," maybe it's asking to much to expect her to actually ACT. I guess John, Ethel, and Lionel were genetic flukes. Or maybe they could act because they never entered rehab.
Hugh Grant can act. He's brilliant, as always. Two problems, though: The script is a mess, and he looks old enough to be Barrymore's father. This is not attractive. The script doesn't work to make it attractive. It just gets creepier and creepier.
There's a really weird, discordant scene. Campbell Scott plays an allegedly abusive novelist and college professor. Campbell Scott plays this role with such intensity and conviction, an intensity and conviction completely missing from the rest of the movie, that you feel as if you've been shuttled into a completely different movie, a Scorcese neo-noir about this professor's shady shenanigans and the dark truth hiding behind the allegations of his having harmed Sophie. Since Sophie can't stand up to him, you wonder if his allegations against her are true, and there's a much better, darker movie hiding behind this foolish, inferior one.
This movie, like many badly made romantic comedies recently, just breaks my heart. Why is the romantic comedy genre in such bad shape? What do atrocious movies like this say about the current conception of women? A final note -- I really want to applaud Kevin Smith's bravely trashing of this mess on Ebert and Roeper. Thank you, Kevin.