Music and Lyrics Critic Reviews

While 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.Read the full review

This 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.Read the full review

Music and Lyrics is frequently appealing, often witty, and occasionally funny, but it's not going to convert skeptics and cynics into sentimentalists.Read the full review

Remember "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.Read the full review

The 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.Read the full review

Grant 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.Read the full review

An agreeably loopy romantic comedy that bounces along effortlessly on the genuine chemistry of leads Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore.Read the full review

Lawrence's take on pop music success is exactly right, satiric without being absurdist, and therefore a prize worth the effort.Read the full review

I 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.Read the full review