Beating her to the punch.

S.A. and I have pretty divergent taste in movies. To be exact, we have a good friend who serves as each of our "date' when one of us wants to see a movies in which the other has no interest. However, there are lots of movie genres where our taste overlaps. Romantic comedies, as a general rules, tend to fit that category.

On Saturday, S.A. and I went on a belated Valentine's date to see Music and Lyrics. I have no doubt that she'll be posting a movie review in her blog at some point in the near future as she felt rather strongly about the film. But I thought I'd try to beat her to it, just to get my two cents in.

IMDB currently has the user ratings in the mid-6's for Music and Lyrics. We try to check out IMDB before seeing a movie. We find that those user ratings correspond more closely with how we feel than the movie reviews you read in the newspaper.

I felt that was just about right. S.A. felt it was about 5.5 too high.

Let me start by saying a couple things. If someone tells you it's predictable, they're right. If they tell you and both Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore play the same character that they play in every other movie they're in, I can't argue. If they tell you the supposedly "hit" music is less than spectacular, they're spot-on. The thing is, in my ever-so-humble opinion, it doesn't matter.

Now in the interest of full disclosure, I should make sure you all understand one thing. I would happily pay to watch Hugh Grant balance his checkbook. And though I think Drew Barrymore is pretty much talentless, watching her movies, for me, is a little like watching a 5-foot-tall glasses-wearing geek trying to play high-school basketball. I'm not saying he's any good, but I kind of root for him anyway.

The movie IS predictable. Very. It's not gonna win any awards. But I'm okay with that. I LIKE happy endings. I don't like movies with anti-heroes. I don't want to have to sort though symbolism. I respect more complex, nuanced romantic comedies like Lost in Translation. But I don't ENJOY them. So knowing that the two main characters would end up together and would write a hit song in the end before the movie had actually started was good by me. (And if you're now howling that I've slipped spoilers ::GASP:: into my movie review, shut up. If you're honestly interested in seeing this movie but don't already inherently know this stuff, you're an idiot, so I don't want to hear it.)

And as for the music... S.A. complained that the songs in the movie could never be hits because the faux-80s songs were cheesy and insipid. She felt that the supposedly modern songs would never succeed because they were tuneless and slightly insulting. I'm left to assume that she does not, in fact, own a radio. The 80s-style stuff sounded A LOT like a great deal of 80's music. The modern stuff was HORRIBLE. And it sounded EXACTLY like 90% of the crap you hear on the radio today. The "hit" song that Hugh & Drew supposedly wrote was insipid and cutesy and if it was recorded by a couple of the fine folks on American Idol, I guarantee it was be a huge hit. I apologize to anyone who's offended by this, but the vast majority of the music-listening public know absolutely nothing about music. They're not looking for Motzart. (Which is good, because they're not gonna find it anywhere.) And that's okay, too. I am pretty well musically-trained. And I downloaded the soundtrack last night, anyway.

Anyway, when it's all finished, Music and Lyrics is probably not going to make you think. But if you let it, it'll probably make you smile. Unless you're my wife. And she liked XXX, so i don't really care what she thinks.

Laterz.