Over the last several years Hugh Grant has expanded his repertoire of films in a big way. His new film Heretic has him playing a horror movie villain and his best performance in recent years has to be playing the bad guy in family-friendly Paddington 2. However, for many my age and older, Hugh Grant will always be known first as a rom-com lead.
Everybody who loves movies probably has a favorite Hugh Grant romantic comedy, and it turns out that includes Quentin Tarantino. In a recent interview with Letterboxd Hugh Grant says he was once stopped on the street by the Pulp Fiction director so Tarantino could sing the praises of one of Grant's films. One might expect a cinephile like Tarantino to love Four Weddings and a Funeral or Notting Hill, but apparently not. Grant said…
He does love that film. I had this weird experience that some do in London: this sweaty person pushed his way through the crowd to me, and it was Quentin Tarantino. And to my enormous surprise, he said, ‘Oh, man, I love Music and Lyrics.’
Music and Lyrics for those perhaps unfamiliar with the criminally underrated rom-com, stars Grant as a former pop star, essentially he plays the “other guy from Wham!” who is barely scraping by on his former fame. When he discovers that the woman hired to water his plants, played by Drew Barrymore, has a talent he lacks for lyrics, the two begin to work on writing a song for a major pop star and fall in love along the way.
While Tarantino has a near-encyclopedic knowledge of film, he doesn't always love the same movies that everybody else loves. He recently spoke about why he thinks the Joker sequel was great, which puts him in opposition to most critics, and he thinks Jaws is the greatest movie ever made.
The rom-com got slightly positive reviews from critics (though our own Music and Lyrics review wasn't exactly glowing) and was a financial success in its day, though certainly not a massive hit at the box office. Tarantino didn’t see the film in theaters himself. He apparently came across it on an airplane but got so into it that, when he wasn’t able to see the end, he ran out to fix that immediately. Grant continued…
He said he watched it on a plane, and was so disappointed that the plane landed before the film ended, that he had to quickly go and order it from Blockbuster or something. And I thought, ‘Surely not, not Quentin Tarantino.
I wouldn’t have thought I had much in common with Quentin Tarantino, but apparently, I do because I also particularly love Music and Lyrics. It certainly doesn’t reinvent the rom-com but it’s an excellent example of one, with two great rom-com stars who are great together and it has a couple of excellent tunes.
Music and Lyrics has been shown at the New Beverly Cinema, which Tarantino owns, specifically because the director wanted it shown there. Considering the classic 35MM films that have screened there, it’s pretty impressive company.