A movie review, plus why I need to get out more

BB and Bunny and I went to see Music and Lyrics when it came out. It's basically okay, for a romantic comedy. I think it's left the theatres, but if it hasn't, I recommend you wait for video. Even then, only if you just love Hugh Grant, because he's the only thing worth watching. Hugh Grant was given the most comprehensive collection of funny lines ever attempted in a single Hugh Grant movie. I understand that during production, they had workers running tests in a laboratory 'round the clock, systematically analyzing how far they could go. The result is an envelope-pushing level of hughgrantiness you'll have to see to believe.

Otherwise? Skip it. Because the rest of the movie is dry as toast and lacking any and all believable romantic interaction. I can't even tell how it ever achieved its PG-13 rating. They must have bribed somebody at the MPAA to look the other way, during all the pathetic lack of objectionable and salacious body-rubbing scenes. Swearing? An absolute bare minimum, and delivered in a British accent so it's, y'know, bloody charming. Sex? Nothing! Just two pairs of legs sticking out from under a piano, plus one - one! - mention of the deed, spoken like they were talking about a shoe sale. PG-13. I ask you.

So here's why things are getting weird for me, and why I'd like to just graduate sometime this year so I can return to normal. During the movie, Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore are sitting in a restaurant with another couple. And the woman they're with is about to launch into a story about how she's a doctor at Columbia, and she just wrote a research paper on ...

Suddenly! Oh no! Drew Barrymore sees someone she's been avoiding throughout the movie! Does she discreetly cover her face with her menu like you and I would? No, she inexplicably jumps up and runs around the restaurant. Then Hugh jumps up and chases her around the restaurant. Hilarity ensues. The audience is laughing. And I'm the only one sitting there thinking, Shit, now we'll never hear about the research paper! 

Comments

[Anthony]

Years ago, when the world was young and the Dark Lord naught but a rumor in the forest of Mirkwood, Pam, BB and I were watching a rock video on MTV (remember them?) and while BB was "ogling" (I use the word cautiously) the pretty female singer in the band I was sitting there, tongue hanging out, panting, saying "wow, do you see that--the bass player is using a Steinberger bass!" Both heads turned to stare at me as though they had never HEARD of a Steinberger bass (a distinctly hi-tech, all artificial composite instrument witha terminally cool look). OK, so, they hadn't heard of a Steinberger bass. But now I stand (or sit) vindicated. Pam has reached my level of professional tangential occupational obsessional interest (PTOOI). Hah. Put that on your Steinberger E-string and pluck it!!

[pam]

Oh, Lord. All the more reason to get out of school! I'm becoming specialized. I avoided it for years but at last it's happening.

[Sue]

Let me admit that the American public did not warm up to motorcycle hands and middle-aged hip thrusts. I did!

I'm not a Hugh-Grant-ophile, per se, though I am a sucker for a romantic comedy and have watched Love Actually more times than a 1977 teenager in New Jersey watched Star Wars (but that is another story.) And I love a coming of age story.

The biggest question is how did the Lurch-like agent get the pretty, hot doctorate.

[Anthony]

By and large I avoid romantic comedies because the CF factor is too much for my current bloodsugar levels to cope with. However, there are a few exceptions:

1) Roxanne: Probably because Edmond Rostand understood love far better than any Hollywood scriptwriter and Riok Rossovich was, well, Rick Rossovich, and even Darryl Hannah posing as an astronomer couldn't undermine the fundamental charm of this big-nosed love triangle.

2) Arthur: Listening to John Gielgud proclaim lines such "it's been a pleasure meeting you Linda; usually, one must go to bowling alley to meet a woman of your caliber" and Geraldine Fitzgerald's exclamation of "peanuts" makes one boggle at the fact that the movie ostensibly stars Dudley Moore and Liza "No Gests Allowed" Minelli and no one really cares all that much.

3) In and Out: Yes, I know, everyone claims they just watch it for the sight of macho Tom Selleck kissing Kevin Kline but the real thrill for moi in this movie is the quirked-out budding romance of Joan Cusack and the riotously funny Matt Dillon (surely one of the truly under-rated comic actors of our time) channeling his inner Brad Pitt (or whichever hipper-than-thou LA brat actor he was parodying) all the way to the Sunset Strip.

4)Eat Man, Drink Woman: Frankly, the food is absolutely the sexiest thing in this Ang Lee dysfunctional family drama, but the tale of the three daughters, their various budding or budded ramonaces and their father's rejuvenated love life/tastebuds is so yummy that it would almost be worth it to be transmigrated into the body of an unhappy Taiwanese cooking dynasty just to eat as well as they do!

[pam]

Sue, I, too, wondered why a Columbia resident was married to a talent agent who has only *one* client.

But such is life in romantic comedies. Eris knows, if we start questioning plausibility, we will surely go mad.

Anthony, I sense the start of a couple of good memes.

[your mother]

I was sort of hoping for a sparkling review of the PPIC policy seminar. Was it the zany, madcap adventure that we were led to believe?