Starring Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore. Rated PG.

Ah, finally: The Andrew Ridgley Story. Writer-director-producer Marc Lawrence, who penned the Miss Congeniality movies and directed the bland Two Weeks Notice, was racing against the clock, with reality TV using up has-been nostalgia as fast as you can say Flavor Flav meets Meat Loaf. (And, no, that isn’t the name of the next Hannibal Lecter flick.)

What makes Music and Lyrics more than a throwaway VH-1 special is the affection Lawrence shows for the songwriting process. Here, he is attempting to capture something of the collaborative effort that goes into making music as well as songs.

Weeks star Hugh Grant, perfectly cast as a slightly less cynical version of his About a Boy character, is Alex Fletcher, the non–George Michael of a 1980s phenom called Pop!. While his original writing- and-singing partner went on to a multimedia career, Alex has, presumably, maintained his midtown Manhattan apartment by shaking it for middle-aged women at county fairs.

He badly needs a break, and one comes when the latest Britney/Christina manquée, called Cora Corman (and played by newcomer Haley Bennett), a childhood fan, invites him to create a tune for her upcoming show at Madison Square Garden. One week’s notice, but hey—no pressure!

A control freak like the quasi-spiritual Cora would never allow such a wild element to be thrown into the well-oiled machinery of a big-scale tour. But no matter; this preposterous notion serves to force self-doubting Alex, who is bad with words outside of real life (“Hold that thinly veiled insult,” he says to someone when the doorbell rings), to hire accident-prone plant lady Sophie (Drew Barrymore) to bang out lyrics on the spot.

This being a movie, she is reluctant to participate, mainly because of a bad personal collaboration with her snaky writing prof (Campbell Scott, showing his dark side, briefly) who based a best-selling book on why he dumped her. Of course, she delivers in the end, and the result (actually written by Adam Schlesinger of Fountains of Wayne) is not exactly an instant classic, although Alex does dub Sophie a “Cole Porter in panties”, quickly adding that this is perhaps not such an unlikely image.

The next conflict comes when Sophie sees that Cora (who believes in “Buddhism in a thong”, as Alex puts it) wants to sex up the song. Big surprise. But this, too, is overcome. In the end, our central couple’s relationship comes off as much more companionable than romantic. And this charmingly lightweight film is often funniest in its throwaway material, given to TV types like Brad Garrett, as his patient manager, and Kristen Johnston, as her beyond-pushy sister. Sometimes the filler cuts stay with you longer than the hits.