Not everybody loves Drew Barrymore, but I’m quite fond of her. Meanwhile, Hugh Grant has done so many rom-coms he could make asking Alexa for the weather forecast sound like he’s about to pop the question. So why do Barrymore and Grant spend most of “Music and Lyrics” (2007) generating such little chemistry? The story of a washed-up pop star and a frustrated writer haphazardly thrown together to hurriedly dash off a song for a current pop star comes off as, well, haphazard, hurriedly thrown together and dashed off (their age difference doesn’t help). Rom-com conventions rescue the ending – barely.
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It was an inspired bit of casting for writer-director Guy Ritchie to make former heartthrob Hugh Grant the weasely linchpin of his British caper flick “The Gentlemen” (2020). Ritchie brings a unique style to this type of film and Grant proves to be a worthy air traffic controller as scenes cut from one character’s perspective to another and back and forth across time. Matthew McConaughey is trying to sell his (illegal) business and he thinks he has a buyer, but cutthroat hijinks ensue. There’s bullets, blood and belly-laughs – sometimes all at once. Ritchie makes it look easier than it is.
It’s easy to write off “Cocktail” as a formulaic modern romantic comedy, except, technically, the formula didn’t exist yet. Tom Cruise made this movie in 1988, six years before one Hugh John Mungo Grant’s p-whipped ass showed up in “Four Weddings and a Funeral.” But Cruise does play the boy-who-never-grew-up, he does get his comeuppance, his id (played by Bryan Brown) gets slain and Cruise does, indeed, get p-whipped. So it’s kind of a beta version. Personally, I wouldn’t have been caught dead in such high-end bars with such douchey, bottle-slinging bartenders as Cruise and Brown back in 1988. Still wouldn’t.
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