Just watched: Music and Lyrics

Music and Lyrics
Starring: Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore

Man, I haven’t laughed so hard so much in 90 minutes since sliced bread! I practically started laughing hysterically since the music video of Pop! Goes My Heart (Warning: Believe me, you do NOT want to click on the link if you intend to watch the movie later.) started rolling i.e. the very beginning of the movie.

The back bone story of the movie is kinda corny. It’s pretty hard not to be able to tell how will the story line go after watching a few chick flicks. After all, most of them do involve mutual attraction of the main characters, mutual hesitation, kissing, sleeping together, down-turns, one character trying to impress the other character, and then most importantly, a happy ending. (I think the only exception which I have watched is The Break-Up.)

But what makes Music and Lyrics great is how the music and movie itself is stitched perfectly and used effectively (Spoilers behind the cut!):

1. The music video right at the beginning just tells the audience effectively that Alex (Hugh Grant’s character) belonged to a band called “Pop!” in the so-very 80s.
2. Cora’s (Haley Bennet’s character) music! It’s so natural that Cora’s character would modify the original version of “Way back into Love” which brought the main character’s fight and then led to the lowest point of their relationship. But at the end she performed it the way how Alex and Sophie (Drew Barrymore’s character) originally intended and brought them right to one of the high points to their relationship.
3. When Alex was playing and singing “Don’t Write Me Off” at Cora’s concert (Just tell me what kind of girl could say No to this). The lyrics described the two character’s history flawlessly:
   

   Since I’ve met you, my whole life has changed
   It’s not just my furniture, you’ve rearranged
   I was living in the past, but somehow you’ve brought me back
   And I haven’t felt like this since before Frankie said relax

   For years I’ve been telling myself, the same old story
   That I’m happy to live off my so called, former glories
   But you’ve given me a reason, to take another chance
   Now I need you, despite the fact, that you’ve killed all my plants

Another reason that I think the movie is entertaining is the co-stars’ effort. There is definitely without a doubt that Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore have done a great job delivering those lines in the most witty way that the script could be. What impressed me most was Hugh Grant’s acting ability, if what he said in this interview was indeed true, and that the parts of him playing piano hadn’t been musically engineered. He’s one scary fast piano learner and a terrific actor who, in my very humble opinion, managed to master the piano to present music with the appropriate emotion in just few months.

By the way, I love the way Hugh Grant shakes his butt in this movie, and it definitely reminisces how he shaked it in Love Actually:

I was also soooo identified with Barrymore’s character when she moved the furniture when she couldn’t work. After all I am a person who has moved her desk and bed (which are the only movable furniture in her room) more than four times in less than a year.

This movie also reminds me my love for making music - well, not making making but playing them. I miss playing piano, again. My piano skills of course is nothing compared to Hugh Grant’s despite the fact that I had played piano much, much longer than he did. I so want to play some piano or whip out my oboe to disrupt my neighbour’s dream right now.

N.B. I have been listening to the movie’s original soundtrack since I came home!