A Scientist at the Movies Reviews by Greg Paris

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Title: Music & Lyrics

Date Viewed: 2/18/07

Details:

Hugh Grant

Drew Barrymore

Haley Bennett

Director: Marc Lawrence

Score: 1/2

The Review: Silly, quirky, shallow, but nevertheless entertaining romantic comedy with the reigning king of the genre (Grant) and a good co-star (Barrymore). The context this time is the world of pop music (who cares?), particularly the pop crap of the '80s (duh?!), and the attempted resurrection of a has-been vocalist who's never been able to get back on top of the charts after his band split up. The set-up is usually pretty much of a gimmick, but in this case, the "Battle of the 80's has beens" pseudo-reality show strikes a bit too close to current network feeds.

They nailed the (retrospectively silly) look and feel of 80's pop, and (just as with A Mighty Wind) the audience was humming and singing and bobbing along with the songs -- in between giggling hysterically at the pseudo-MTV music video -- as if we knew the lyrics in our bones, even though we all knew it was manufactured specifically for this movie.

The spacey girl-child star ("Cora Corman") found a suitable channel in Haley Bennett -- a prototypic, pretentious, oh-so-serious, strutting teen idol. Brittany, watch out!

(18-Feb-07)

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