It's a given that most romantic comedies exist in a parallel universe, one that relies on contrivance and coincidence to fulfill its characters' wishes. When done right, it's easy to forgive their far-fetched twists and unlikely attractions and get lost in the fantasy of funny, appealing people falling in love against all odds.
Unfortunately, Music and Lyrics is not one of those pictures, but rather an assembly-line rom-com with a setup so artificial it'll test the good will of even the most starry-eyed moviegoers. Thanks to game performances by mismatched stars and , Music and Lyrics has a few amusing moments, but the actors ultimately can't rise beyond director 's groaningly unfunny screenplay. Lawrence, whether writing hits ( , ) or misses ( or the dreadful remake), always seems stuck in his sitcom roots, and this latest film is no exception.
Worse, his strained script plays like an undercooked first draft rushed into production to meet its stars' tight schedules which perhaps it was. There's intrinsic romantic gold in the idea of a couple drawn to each other by their love of music and the potential sexiness of artistic collaboration. But neither Grant's Alex Fletcher a washed-up pop star from a Wham-like '80s band nor Barrymore's weirdly neurotic Sophie Fisher has any great passion for music.
For Alex, it's a paycheck; for Sophie, it's an alien world. When they pair up to quickly compose a song for reigning pop princess Cora Corman ( ), it's such a joyless tug of war you'd think they were sitting in side-by-side dentist chairs. For some reason, Cora (think: gone Buddhist) plucks Alex out of retro obscurity to pen a tune for her upcoming tour.
But Alex is perfectly happy headlining county fairs and high school reunions and trading on his glory days as a shaggy-haired, hip-popping, early-MTV icon (a spot-on music video of his band PoP's signature hit is the movie's high point). In fact, only Alex's oily manager (a flat Brad Garrett) is excited about the songwriting gig, and he convinces his sole client that it's a surefire way back into the big time. Lazy, bland, and not terribly talented, Alex needs inspiration, which he finds in the wildly improbable Sophie, who shows up unannounced to tend his houseplants.
Talk about a bogus "meet cute." The guy's got a total of, like, five small plants one of which is a cactus, and another's plastic and Sophie knows as little about their care as she does about writing song lyrics. Nonetheless, after she inadvertently spouts a few rhyming words that miraculously match the tune Alex is tinkling on his piano, he dubs her a genius and a musical duo is born.
Their inevitable romance is about as fake and un-compelling as the lyrics Sophie pinches out, but Grant and Barrymore with little help from Lawrence's uninspired direction do their best to sell it. Not that you don't want them to get together, but given how destined they seem to crash and burn, you wonder if it's really such a good idea after all. Then again, neither character seems to have any great romantic karma; Alex has seen little more than a revolving door of one-night stands, while Sophie's big love was a pompous novelist ( ) who dumped her, and then wrote a trashy bestseller loosely based on her life.
In any event, it's a match made for the marquee not for reality. One final sour note: (TV's ), on-hand as Sophie's pushy older sister, is so badly shot she should sue. For someone playing the proprietor of a diet business (rip-snortingly named "Weight-Not"), she looks positively Amazonian.
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