Something awful happens in the middle of "Music and Lyrics," the newest romantic comedy from writer/director Marc ("Two Weeks Notice") Lawrence. It's like bringing a puppy home from the pound and marveling at its cuteness until the moment it defecates on your favorite rug.

In this film, it's that moment when the novelty of making fun of '80s pop singers, of which Alex Fletcher (Hugh Grant) is one, wears off and the realization that there's not much holding the movie together begins. It's also the point you begin to notice the way the scenes are structured and the interminable length of some of them. There are actually moments in the movie where you'd swear the actors are waiting for the director to yell cut. In fact, this may be Lawrence's gift to the world: the ability to convey the reality that conversations go nowhere, stop suddenly, and often don't restart quite right or at all. It's a reality that we only become aware of when somebody is bothering us by pointing it out.

That Alex and Sophie Fisher (Drew Barrymore) ever meet is sort of a lark. Alex has the opportunity to write a song for the latest teen pop sensation, Cora Corman (Haley Bennett), but has no confidence as a lyricist. Enter Sophie, who's only in Alex's apartment to water the plants. After some idle chatter, Alex realizes that Sophie is his lyricist and they begin working on the song prompting an immediate epiphany by any audience member with a double digit IQ that they've become the "Music and Lyrics" of the title and are destined for couplehood.

The main question I had after this set-up was this: Are there people who actually make a living watering plants? Sophie is just filling in for Alex's regular plant lady. Her real job is working with her sister (Kristin Johnston) in their family's weight-loss business. Okay, I'm sure if you're rich you have plant ladies and butt wipers and whatever other kind of slave substitute one can imagine, but Alex isn't exactly rolling in the dough and seems perfectly capable of watering his own damn plants.

There's something about the film's thin, semi-serious commentary on today's pop idols -- embodied in Cora -- that I find nauseating. Cora's commercialized religion is just annoying enough to be funny but not offensive enough to make anybody think about its wider implications. Sure, it's not a movie's job to do such things, but there's an innocuousness there that disturbs me.

"Music and Lyrics" is not much different from many of the forgettable '80s pop tunes it ridicules.