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83The movie is an unusually witty and intelligent romantic comedy and Hollywood's best Valentine's Day gift in years.
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75Grant and Barrymore are very enjoyable together onscreen. Who would've guessed that Barrymore would turn into such a deft comedian?
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75As a premise, this is thinner than a strand of cotton candy, but fairy tales have been hung from less, and what keeps this one together is the surprisingly easy chemistry between Grant and Barrymore.
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75The two generate more heart than they do heat, but that's the point. You want to see them together not just because they're adorable, but because you believe that their characters can take each other to a place neither could get to on their own.
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75Lawrence's take on pop music success is exactly right, satiric without being absurdist, and therefore a prize worth the effort.
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75This appealing romantic comedy undertakes the conventions of the formula without an inordinate amount of clichés. Music also infuses the overall plot with a satire of the music industry, and the pop tunes and lyrics are catchy.
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75Music and Lyrics is frequently appealing, often witty, and occasionally funny, but it's not going to convert skeptics and cynics into sentimentalists.
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75The planets aligned favorably, and this "Music" is sweet without cloying the appetite. It follows the meetcute-kissyface-breakup-reunion pattern of most of its kind, but the behavior seems more genuine and the situations less forced.
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75This movie doesn't pretend to be anything more than a cheerful night out, and on that count it scores.
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75The film's a bit like a dessert that could have been dinner, particularly with so many winning elements (including songs by Fountains Of Wayne's Adam Schlesinger and a brief appearance from a wickedly sleazy Campbell Scott). But dessert isn't a bad thing either, particularly when it's prepared with this much heart.
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70An agreeably loopy romantic comedy that bounces along effortlessly on the genuine chemistry of leads Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore.
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70It may be slight, but it's also buoyant and pleasurable, partly because the leads make the whole thing feel like a spontaneous duet. Lawrence trusts them to carry the picture, without feeling the need to throw in a lot of extraneous fluff.
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70Grant carries the day as the fortysomething lad still living off his youth and just about getting away with it.
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70I don't think the ending is up to the rest of the movie, but Grant and Barrymore are great together, and the movie has both zing and song.
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67Grant is game for a new level of meta-ha-ha, joke's-on-me in Music and Lyrics. But with Drew Barrymore as his costar, this bland, light romantic comedy insists on keeping the commentary as disposable as one of the '80s gumball tunes Grant used to swivel to as Alex Fletcher, a washed-up '80s pop star.
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63In the end, the movie's just the kind of enjoyably empty-headed fluff it celebrates and mocks. It sits up, it begs, eventually it plays dead, and still you want to pat it on the head. It's a good dog.
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63Fortunately, director-writer Marc Lawrence (he also created the Hugh Grant-Sandra Bullock comedy "Two Weeks Notice") manages saccharine saturation by tempering his stars' familiar appeal with enough dry wit to make this low-key romantic comedy a not-too-sticky Valentine's Day offering.
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60The plot is paper-thin, and the set-up is beyond contrived (a plant waterer?), but there are a surprising number of laughs, and the saccharine content is kept to a minimum. A mostly enjoyable experience, all told.
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60While there is not much chemistry between Mr. Grant and Ms. Barrymore, they are professional enough to work with the movie's conceit while sending flickers of idiosyncratic charm off the screen.
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58If writer-director Marc Lawrence had stuck with Alex's faded glory, Music and Lyrics could have been terrific. It could have been about something. Instead, he's confected a curdled valentine.
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50Grant hasn't had any real chemistry with a female co-star since Julia Roberts in "Notting Hill," but Barrymore works so hard at it and is so charming that you might be fooled.
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50What charm the movie has is almost entirely due to Grant and Barrymore -- the master of smarmily irresistible self-deprecation meets the sweetly vulnerable queen of awkward self-sabotage. While they have no romantic chemistry, they're certainly appealing.
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50The music is catchy. The actors are likeable. It's all pleasant enough to watch but ultimately it's about as substantial as a pop song. Though it's unlikely to stay with you quite so long.
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The result is either a brilliant bit of idol worship satire or a sign of the apocalypse. Despite the sad fact that audiences will surely settle for this watered down, kind of funny attempt at the genre, I couldn't help but enjoy the ride a little.
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Music and Lyrics suggests that it's going to be about redemption, the second act in the life of a punchline, but it feels as though it were made to fit a date on a studio's release schedule. (Happy Valentine's Day!) Oh, well, at least the songs are catchy, and the two-tone video for "Pop Goes My Heart" is inspired.
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50Drew Barrymore is that rare movie starlet who can handle the comedy end of romantic comedy, but she coasts through her underwritten role as a goofy plant sitter recruited by Grant to write his lyrics.
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40Music And Lyrics never really finds its tone. Fans of Barrymore and Grant are likely to enjoy their pleasing ramblings, and the modern-day, down-to-earth courtship is handled well. But this is unlikely to go down as either actor's finest hour.
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40Remember "The Flight of the Phoenix," the movie about the misshapen plane, built from scavenged parts, that flies its builders to safety? Music and Lyrics is like that plane, up to a point. The plot is misshapen, the pieces are scavenged and nothing quite fits. The film does manage to take off, albeit barely, then flits around cheerfully in search of coherence, but finally crashes and fizzles.
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30Among its other sins, the disposable romantic comedy Music and Lyrics fluffs a golden opportunity to make hay with Grant's dark side.
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25Inherently laughable, but in all the wrong ways.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 27 out of 34
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Mixed: 5 out of 34
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Negative: 2 out of 34
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BillV.5Methodical delivery slowed this movie down and left at least one sub-plot unexplored. Bu ok if you like seeing Barrymore and Grant together.
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NormD.7