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Stars: "High Fidelity" stars John Cusack playing the character he usually plays: hapless, a little downtrodden, but nonetheless loveable. It's based on the book of the same name by Nick Hornby, except it takes place in Chicago, not London. The best aspect of his character, Rob Gordon, is that he has my dream job. He owns a used record store. This is supposed to be a movie about relationships, but I was more interested in the record store and the employees. The movie begins with Cusack's most recent breakup in progress. His girlfriend of two years, a lawyer (played by Iben Hjejle) is leaving him for Ian, played by an hilarious Tom Robbins with a "Steven Segal ponytail". The breakup causes him to make a top 5 list of his all time worst breakups, and summarily rehash these experiences to figure out just what is wrong with him. In the meantime, he has a fling with Lisa Bonet, in the tortured female singer role. I assume that's really her singing, because it doesn't sound good. Nevertheless, as a vinyl junkie, it's one of Rob's dreams to be with a musician. How avant garde! He also manages to contact his old girlfriends, including Catherine Zeta-Jones, who is great in her role as an absolutely self-centered and horrid person, and Lili Taylor, whom he finds out was really psycho and on meds. He realizes that he really wasn't responsible for these romantic failings. But what about Iben? How can he make her realize that he really is the one for her? Rob is, after all, the self proclaimed "Number one lover man in (his) postal code". Let's just say that the romantic situation gets resolved in the end, for better or worse. What I really enjoyed about this movie was the exposition of the subculture of record store employees and groupies. Rob and his other two employees (played by the amazing Jack Black and Todd Louiso) spend all day making up top five lists. They choose which customers are cool enough to buy records and which ones are not allowed. They compare their respective record collections like men at the gym compare muscles. Finally, they hang out at the record store even when they're not supposed to be working. Having worked at two different record stores for a cumulative total of 4 ½ years, I can tell you - this is accurate! Every time one of us found a rare record or CD, we would always come into work the next day bragging about it and say something obnoxious like, "I can make you a tape." I once came up with a formula for figuring out which Elvis Costello record was my favorite by coming up with my top 20 songs and seeing which album had the most of those songs on it. We used to have contests to see who could find the coolest, best deal on E-bay. One of us actually collected deleted Smiths singles! (See the movie.) We also had regular customers (all male) who would come in and talk for hours about Tom Waits, Andreas Scholl, or something even more obscure. I remember once having a conversation about rap music that was about an hour long with a man who listens primarily to Bruckner and Vaughan-Williams. Record stores are microcosms of weirdness and as comfortable as home. This is why "High Fidelity" is such a cute and engaging movie, particularly if you understand the nature of long time record store employees. They develop a machismo that's just not comprehensible to those who don't frequent record stores on a regular basis (which, I'm starting to think, is true of most of this school.) Anyway, the plot moves kind of slow but the intelligent and witty dialogue and high degree of realism make this movie extremely worthwhile. |
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(out of 5)