The Ro-Co Report: Music & Lyrics

I convinced my friend Polly to go see it finally! So we went yesterday. What is “it” you innocently and ignorantly ask? Why, “Music & Lyrics” foolios! The five readers of this blog know that(I was about to write 10 but I didn’t want to overestimate)I had been eagerly anticpating this movie ever since saw the preview while watching another ro-co, “The Holiday”. It came out on Valentine’s Day but I didn’t get to see it for whatever reason or another until now.

So…

What’s it all about? The long and short of it? It was pretty good. It wasn’t great. I don’t put it up there with like When Harry Met Sally or even as much as say My Best Friend’s Wedding, or for that matter Four Weddings & A Funeral, or Muriel’s Wedding. Quite a lot of wedding ro-cos, eh? I suppose it follows.

Let’s go over the ingredients. They do indeed meet cute. She’s the fill-in plant waterer and she comes in and gets pricked by his cactus and then leaves abruptly. The next time she comes in, she absent mindedly finishes the lyric to a song he’s composing.

They’ve the best friend components of course. With Hugh’s manager being his, played by the tall guy from Everybody Knows Raymond, and Drew’s sister being hers, played by the tall gal from 3rd Rock From The Sun. (She actually steals the show in this movie. She’s in love with Grant’s character from back in the 80’s.)

A word about the age difference between them—seemed almost borderline. Or maybe it’s just Hugh looks a little gruff around the edges these days. I just imdbed them to check. Interesting. Mr. Grant is older than I thought. He’s 47. And Drew is 32. So 15 years between them. If she were younger than 30, it would be a little oogie. But it still kind of works.

They returned Hugh to his normal stuttering witty yet a little incompetent Brit self as opposed to his recent turns as cad. Which makes sense because he’s trying to trade in on his cache as a member of the 80’s ficitional pop band, Pop!(that exclamation point is in the name. Not the end of my sentence.) They’re basically Duran Duran. Or really Duran Duran meets Wham!(again, not the end of the sentence, but end of band name). The movie opens with a video from Pop! and it’s hilarious. They effectively lampoon most elements of the early 80’s video.

1) black & white checkers on the background
2) ridiculous side-to-side dancing and snapping
3) having one person inside a tv talking to the other bandmate, a sort of Max Headroom effect
4) lame plot scenario that the bandmates act out

All they needed to do was add the Aha effect where they look it’s a drawing and they’re all set.

Anyway… so they meet, she becomes his lyricist to write a song for this Britney Spears type. And they get overwhelmed at one point and sleep together. Then he says something out of turn at one point about how he wishes that love would be more like a business relationship, you state what you want and then you either take it or leave it. Which she then scathingly includes in the lyrics of the song they are working on.

Suffice it to say, he does something to get her back and yes it’s a song. And no he never wrote lyrics before, and yes they’re actually not bad. (By the way, they both sing pretty well, or well enough. They sound cute singing together which is the most important thing.) The movie ends with the video from the beginning but in pop-up video fashion with the epilogue. Nice touch.

I don’t think I can give this movie a higher grade even though it was fine. But I’ve really almost explained the whole movie to you. That’s it. In most great ro-cos there’s a lot more than just one misstep. I don’t know. Maybe that’s the reason it was only 96 minutes long. Felt like it was missing some beats to it. (Nice musical pun there Shelks!)(I try.)

Music & Lyrics: Solid B