Since Four Weddings and a Funeral, Hugh Grant has turned mimicking himself into a highly specialized art form, right up there with scrimshaw and ivory miniatures—but the screenplay for Music and Lyrics pushes him to a level of self-parody that's almost precious. In the tailor-made role of a washed-up '80s pop star (in a band called Pop!, no less), he is made to utter such Grantian lines as "Don't tease me; I'm very vulnerable at the moment" without so much as winking. Grant's face is never entirely straight, of course—it's twinkly and abashed and tentatively in on the joke—and it's amusing to see him shrug in and out of his own "sensitive" mantle at the same time his character squirms beneath his "sexy" reputation.

Somewhat intriguingly, Music and Lyrics applies the narrative formula for a rom-com to the working relationship between a composer and a lyricist, and the tension derives from purely professional differences. (Sleeping together is an afterthought.) Unfortunately, those professional differences include: Should we be true to the purity of the pop song, or sell out to yogic pop diva Cora? Is the correct metaphor for pop music that of a fulfilling "dinner" or a superfluous "dessert"? Drew Barrymore, Grant's plant-waterer-turned-"born-lyricist," is the unfortunate bearer of these ponderous quandaries. She tries her best to distract us (oops! she overwatered the plants again!), but the movie sags after the first song is written. Some of the blame has to go to Haley Bennett, as Cora, who's supposed to unite Ray of Light–era Madonna and "Dirrty"-era ChristinaAguilera. Instead, she lands somewhere between simple-minded and obnoxious.

annie@thestranger.com