Music And Lyrics shatters the music bio-pic paradigm of childhood tragedy followed by success/addiction/rehab and a final round of success just before death. In this uplifting chronicle of The Captain and Tennille, kids neither go blind nor get mangled by table saws, adults say no to the backstage candy man, and record companies are realistically portrayed as the benevolent, royalty-paying muses who make the whole process possible.
Hugh Grant gives a buoyant performance as Daryl Dragon. A talented keyboardist, Dragon's early career was held back by his nice-guy image, something that only Neil Sedaka (Zak Orth, so good he could be accused of channeling Sedaka, except that Sedaka isn't dead) had the courage to point out. Sedaka challenged Dragon to create a manlier persona -- advice Dragon took to heart. His first few attempts overshot the mark, as he alternately called himself “The Czar,” “The Barbarian,” and, after shaving his head and jutting out his mandible, “Il Duce.” It was only after the still-out-of-work Dragon was watching Gilligan's Island that he decided to call himself “The Skipper,” which quickly became “The Captain” when actor Alan Hale Jr. threatened legal action.
Drew Barrymore, as songstress Toni Tennille, shows off acting chops we haven't seen from her since the nuanced performance she gave as the gun-toting, sodomy-loving title character of The Amy Fisher Story. She proves to be the brains of the duo, steering them to a cover of Sedaka's “Love Will Keep Us Together” at a time when Dragon wanted to record Nazareth's “Hair Of The Dog.”
Music And Lyrics is an ode to the joy of popular music. For The Captain and Tennille, success followed success as they treated the world to hits like “Shop Around,” “Muskrat Love,” and “Do That To Me One More Time.” When the dark side of the business threatened to intrude, it was brushed aside through a combination of ignorance and insouciance, as when The Captain tells a shadowy figure peddling “happiness in a bag” that “Toni is the only heroine in my life.”
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