Cora the exotica-smoking pop tart

Music and Lyrics is the first movie I’ve seen (second if you count the vaguely Eastern flautist in Serendipity) where the plot pivots on a putdown of bad Indian exotica. Cora is a Christina Aguilera-Shakira-Madonna pop tart who mixes a pop ballad with ‘this heavy Indian thing,’ drugstore spirituality and rock guitar before unzipping and writhing on stage. She’s the kind who enters Madison Square Garden by being shat out the rear of a giant Buddha. She exasperates Drew Barrymore with a mashup that ‘destroys two musical cultures.’

Taliyan! What’s left to snark about? The movie does my job for me: not all fusion is well done or even desirable. Now if we could only get the heavy-handed Kal Ho Naa Ho track ‘Pretty Woman’ to take the hint.

The M&L soundtrack dragoons two Ravi Shankar tracks, ‘Ghanashayam’ and ‘Raga Raja Kalyan,’ for comic purposes. Aasif Mandvi is the new go-to actor for playing New York immigrants. He’s underused as Khan, a tone-deaf NYC doorman with a desi accent.

The movie is sweet and deeply formulaic. Hugh Grant plays a floppy-haired, washed-up teen idol. I’m sure the joke is not lost upon him. Barrymore’s character, both earthy and spacey, is a messy eater. The tic was put to far better use in A Good Year as a symptom of Russell Crowe’s jittery, man-eating vitality.

Watch the trailer.

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