music & lyrics

There’s little to say about this inoffensive fluff piece except that the smattering of reviews I just peeked at were very kind to the females in it. Hugh Grant is Hugh Grant again with Andrew Ridgeley sprinkles on top, and though he’s played this part so many times he could hardly help having mastered it, he’s definitely mastered it. Unfortunately, Drew Barrymore is also Drew Barrymore again, and unfortunately that means she’s very difficult to believe most of the time.

However, she’s John Barrymore next to the teensy blonde playing Cora, the Britney/Madonna amalgam. All the reviews I skimmed loved her, but I just saw a massively blown opportunity — she read her lines as though she were a makeup girl they grabbed at the last minute and faced toward a teleprompter. So what could have been a trenchant, hilarious send-up of singing nymphets wasn’t. Britney might be nuts but she’d need a lobotomy to sound this stupid and tranquilized. It’s hard to believe they couldn’t have found a girl able to sing, dance nearly naked, AND read a line with marginal feeling.

Oh well. It was a pleasant enough background while I learned how to check the fuses in my car and futilely tried to find cheap flights across the country.

2 comments

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  1. Mandy · March 24, 2008

    It was kind of a cute send-up of 80s pop. But yeah, it was like one long joke.

    I think Ms. Barrymore has cornered the market on “awkward-cute.” I remember reading a blog entry or something where someone suggested that Emily Watson should have played Beatrix Potter instead of Renee Zellweger, and really, I think if Emily Watson were given more roles, she would take the awkward-cute woman of the year award for sure.

  2. encyclops · March 24, 2008

    I like Emily Watson. I like Drew Barrymore too, and I think she’s cuter, but Emily Watson is the better actress.