I am a perpetually single gal whose birthday happens to fall two days
before Valentine's Day, so that candy-coated holiday is a pretty
uneventful affair for me. Still, it's a shame to let the day pass
without a bit of celebration, so when my friend Libbie and I first saw a
preview for Music and Lyrics, the romantic comedy written and
directed by Marc Lawrence that opened on February 14, we began hatching a
plan to toast the day with what looked to be an innocuous little film
whose writing-oriented premise might just provide us with a bit of
inspiration. As we trudged through the snowy parking lot of the movie
theater yesterday in the aftermath of the blizzard that kept us home on
opening night, she reminded me, "I usually don't care much about Hugh
Grant or Drew Barrymore. But I'm really excited about this movie!" As an
aspiring songwriter who is fond of both actors, especially the former, I
shared her enthusiasm, and within minutes of the film's beginning,
she'd changed her tune about the illustrious Mr. Grant...
As
washed-up pop star Alex Fletcher, Grant is atypically well-composed, not
bumbling and clumsy as he so often is, yet not strung-out or
insufferably hot on himself either, as one might expect from a former
teen idol. No, Alex is perfectly affable, self-effacing and gentlemanly,
with a gentle wit always at the ready. He's a bit pathetic, perhaps,
eking out a living by wearing very tight pants and risking fractures
while replicating his trademark hip thrusts for squealing housewives at
amusement parks and class reunions, but he does have enough self-respect
to draw the line at participating in the ill-conceived Battle of the 80s Has-Beens,
featuring boxing matches between fading rockers who topped the charts
two decades ago. But with a little help from his long-suffering manager
Chris Riley (a low-key Brad Garrett), he scores a dream job that could
completely revitalize his career: the assignment to write a hit song for
tween pop sensation Cora Cormann (newcomer Haley Bennett) by the
weekend. There are just two problems with this: Alex hasn't composed a
song in twenty years, and he's never written lyrics at all. What's a
poor has-been to do?
The seemingly perfect solution falls into
Alex's lap when, during a disastrous writing session with emo, elitist
lyricist Greg Antonsky (Jason Antoon), he overhears some impromptu
versification from Sophie Fisher (Barrymore), the flighty woman filling
in for his regular plant caretaker. The idea of hiring someone to water
his paltry assemblage of vegetation is rendered even sillier by her
utter ineptitude, from spacing out and drowning some plants to watering
others despite the fact that they are plastic and fleeing in search of a
Band-Aid when she pricks her finger on a cactus. Luckily, she is a much
better writer than gardener, though she insists that she has no special
talents in that area and resists Alex's earnest entreaties to assist
him with his song-writing endeavor.
Having seen the
commercials, I knew she'd come around before too long, but this awkward
shuffle toward the beginning charmed me. As an aspiring lyricist myself,
I will probably spend the rest of the year daydreaming about a
disarmingly gorgeous and talented Brit scooping me out of obscurity with
one serendipitous offer of partnership. Sophie is rendered all more
lovable by her self-doubt, which plagues her throughout the course of
the film, though at times its presence proves an almost insurmountable
obstacle. Nonetheless, there is real magic in the way the poetic phrases
roll off her tongue in an unguarded moment, just as instantly hummable
melodies flow from Alex's fingertips.
While Music and Lyrics
provided plenty of laughs, it's much more a romance than a comedy. The
bulk of the humor involves making fun of the eighties, of the atrocious
styles and over-the-top pop sensibilities, and most of all of aging
teenie-boppers who delight in acting as though they were frozen in time,
however ridiculous that might make them look. I can't decide whether it
must have been flattering or humiliating for Grant to get up on stage
time and again in pants that would make David Bowie blush, shaking his
groove thing, swinging those hips and praying not to sprain anything.
Given Grant's professed dislike of acting, my suspicions would lead me
to believe the latter, but he looks like he's having such fun up
there...
And I shouldn't find it surprising that such a
dreamboat would possess a voice that could melt butter. Okay, I'm
probably overstating things, but I never heard Grant sing before, and he
has a wonderfully warm, expressive voice with a tender tone that is
complemented especially beautifully by his character's emotive piano
playing. Barrymore's voice is nice, too, the one time we hear it, and so
is Bennett's when she isn't turning her songs into a sitar-drenched
striptease. I found her character to present an interesting dichotomy.
On the one hand, she's a gorgeous young woman compelled to outdo Shakira
for seductiveness with each sultry dance and skimpy outfit, and the
extravagance of her entourage seems to scream diva, but in face-to-face
interactions she is calm, centered, taking a very Zen approach to life
and treating those around her with great respect and consideration. Her
behavior in the climactic concert scenes is especially telling.
Barrymore and Grant's chemistry is terrific, their romance sweet and
touching as Sophie and Alex build up one another's confidence, helping
each other to see how gifted they truly are. Their courtship is
otherwise so chaste and tasteful, I rather wish the hook-up scene, which
is pretty much a given in modern-day film romances, could have been
left out. Why can't a little smooching be enough for these moviemakers?
Still, in all other respects - aside, perhaps, from Cora's eye-popping
displays, which would be well suited to a Victoria's Secret ad - Music and Lyrics
hardly earns its PG-13 rating, with no profanity that I recall and
precious little crudeness, most of it deriving from the inappropriate
attentions of menopausal women, especially Sophie's sister Rhonda
(Kristen Johnston), toward Alex.
Perhaps the most remarkable
thing about the film, however, is the music. I'm actually tempted to go
out and buy this soundtrack, which has indeed brought me a fresh wave of
songwriting inspiration. Kudos to Adam Schlesinger for contributing a
series of endearing and commercially viable pop gems, from A Way Back Into Love,
the affecting song Alex and Sophie co-write, whose melodious musical
phrases trickle through the score, enhancing the mood at opportune
times, to the bubblegum hit Dance With Me Tonight, which is a centerpiece of one of the film's funniest and most touching scenes.
Nothing, however, can compare with the brilliance that is Pop! Goes My Heart, the catchiest movie tune since That Thing You Do!.
The first two and a half minutes of the movie are taken up by its music
video, a relentless barrage of eighties references from the fluffy
hair, frilly shirts and exuberant choreography to the overblown backing
beat, melodramatic midsection and dizzying black-and-white checkered
background. By the third repetition of the chorus - "I said I wasn't
gonna lose my head, but then Pop! goes my heart (pop goes my heart) / I
wasn't gonna fall in love again, but then Pop! goes my heart (pop goes
my heart)..." - Libbie and I were chiming in, and the film obligingly
offered two more opportunities for increased familiarity with the song,
so that by the time we got back to my house, we could think of nothing
but securing the video and embedding it in our MySpace pages for all the
world to see. A quick trip to YouTube quickly sated our desire, and
over the course of the evening we must have watched the video a dozen
times. Yes, it's that good. If this baby doesn't get a nod for Best Song when next year's Oscar nominations roll around, I shall be very put out.
Music and Lyrics
is one of the most satisfying films I've seen recently, so whether or
not it helps me to write a hit pop song, I count it as a most edifying
movie-watching experience. And I think Libbie might just have to agree
with me when I say that Hugh Grant is music to my ears.
No comments:
Post a Comment