Oh, Hughie, you’ve done it again.
You’ve managed to snatch another charmingly witty role — though this time, unfortunately, it was in a run-of-the-mill romantic comedy.
In “Music & Lyrics,”” genre vet Hugh Grant plays Alex Fletcher, a 1980s pop music has-been who is trying to earn back the limelight by writing a song for the latest pop idol, Cora Corman (Haley Bennett). The problem is that Fletcher is terrible with lyrics and he only has less than a week to come up with a song. Solution: the girl he pays to care for his plants, who manages to bust a few rhymes while watering his fern.
The “plant lady”” is Sophie Fisher (Drew Barrymore), a stereotypically weird, artsy girl with some issues. Fisher’s problem is that Sloan Cates (Campbell Scott), her former lover and English professor, wrote a best-selling book with the main character unflatteringly inspired by her. Solution: older man number two, our beloved Hughie.
But, of course, it’s not that easy. The clashing pair must work together to compose the piece, often pulling at each other’s nerves and standing at different levels of pushover-ness when Corman wants to “modernize”” the song, an almost worthy parody on the overt sexuality and general stupidity of contemporary pop music.
However, “worthy”” cannot come close to describing the film as a whole. The story’s structure and elements are the same as always — if you’ve seen any other romantic comedy in the last decade, you’ve seen this — only now it’s cased by the music industry.
“Lyrics”” does offer a few genuinely good laughs, but overall, repeats the same jokes. There are only so many times Grant can do a dorky pelvic shake before it gets dull. Also, on a more technical note, his character’s unwillingness to change his own ’80s dress is a contradiction to how quickly he agrees to change the style and tone of the song he writes with Fisher. It comes off as unnatural that some characters are inconsistent while others remain so overly plain: The dark, angsty lyricist played by Jason Antoon has the incredibly simple role of being disgusted and angry at every warm-hearted scene — a joke that gets outplayed as well.
It’s also strange that the two principal supporting characters, Chris Riley (Brad Garret) and Corman are humongous in size comparison to Grant and Barrymore, making their dialogue a bit awkward.
The romantic comedy genre is constantly plagued with uninspired pieces like “Music & Lyrics,”” and throwing Grant into the mix doesn’t do much to save either.
