Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist (Review)

Glamorous indie rock and roll, New York is thy name. This aspirational film for hipster kids everywhere paints a portrait of overly talented and highly connected high school kids with fake IDs running amuck in NYC over one shimmering night of comically tumultuous coming of age set to some of the finest music the kid down the street insists is the best thing ever (on his blog). Welcome to Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist.

Starting out in North Jersey (as all nights in Manhattan do) we are introduced to Norah – a brunette who seems indefinably uncomfortable in her private, single-sex school with a group of blonds who are nicely movie-plastic. She is in love with the desperate ex-boyfriend of classmate Tris whom she’s never met but knows only through a series of mixtapes that he has sent (and which Tris heartlessly trashes) over a six month period. This, of course is Nick, reluctant arbiter of taste and the straight bassist in a queer-core band struggling to come up with a name. Being in mourning still, he rebuffs his bandmate’s when they try to get him to come out for the evenings gig.

When an announcement is made on a radio station that the uber-cool and mysterious band Where’s Fluffy? (yes, their name is part of their gimmick) will be playing one of their infamous sets somewhere in the city that night though, everything swings into action for your typical night in the city romp as people meet, separate, lose cell phones, miscommunicate, get tired, get drunk, have sex, fall in love, get jealous, make mistakes and figure it all out before the first NJT train of the morning leaves Penn Station. Did I mention this is all set to the swirlingly warm tones of the most lauded indie tracks of the day?

The film really is a trainspotter’s dream. They name drop every lauded rock venue in two boroughs (cuz there is no need to ever go to Queens, The Bronx or SI) and the ever present soundtrack changes from minute to minute during the night that one has to be an astute trainspotter to keep up with it all. The story itself is rather conventional and Cera (Nick) shows once again that Apatow (who, for the record has nothing to do with this) is a genius at type casting but not so great at finding “actors.” Still when you fit the part you fit the part. The one person I’m happy to say has impressed me quite a bit in the performance department from said machine is Jay Baruchel who, after a strong turn in Tropic Thunder, takes on a seedy struggling musician in the mold of Julian Casablancas who is trying to use the other casting stand out, Kat Dennings’s (Charlie Bartlett, 40 Year Old Virgin) Norah, as a way to get a record deal for his Zion Fire Rock outfit. Also of note on the comic relief front are Norah’s bff Caroline played by Ari Graynor who provides the bulk of the B-story as she gets wasted and then gets lost by the super-gay bandmates Rafi Gavron (Breaking and Entering) and Aaron Yoo (21, The Wackness, Disturbia) who try to take her off Norah’s hands so that Nick can get the rebound started. (Yoo btw, is almost 30 and is still playing a kid in HS – take that Luke Perry).



While not earth shattering N&NIP is a nicely crafted piece of escapist fluff and if this is you kind of scene or, more likely if you’d like it to be Mr. Minnesota blogger, then I would say to rush out and see it like 8 times while you listen to the leaked soundtrack on your iPod. For everyone else – how do you feel about Before Sunrise light?

B/B+

Charlie Bartlett (Review)

Charlie Bartlett is amusing high school comedy teeming with pop psychology and self aware teens just waiting for the spark that breaks them from their clicks and inspires everyone to come together to have fun and fight the man. The spark is the titular character played by Anton Yelchin and the man is hard drinking Robert Downey Jr. Yelchin brings a kind of goofy charm to the roll much like he did as the unwitting victim in Alpha Dog and the character is given to flourishes of zany teenage wackiness, a refreshing break from the genre where most writers feel the need to bury these character building parts of their adolescent memory in favor of plot. Bartlett is the perfect aspiration character for a film like this, the mischievous outcast who uses his wits and to become king-o-the-school. Most of the characters in the film are archetypes with obvious psych 101 issues but since that is the plot of the film is don’t see it as a problem, the same with some of the more predictable and cheese ball moments that both flow from this and are pretty much par for the course in the genre.

What I liked the most was that the film isn’t about sex and parties – which are just treated as banal parts of the HS experience – or about the clique-y nature of HS politics but instead focuses on the identity quandaries and psych issues of the students. The film owes much more to John Hughes’s Breakfast Club than American Pie or Clueless but the black and white nature of authority that was present in that classic is also investigated in this film. The filmmaker’s paid more attention to the “moment” between Vernon & Carl and drew that out into a full character who is in the end also a victim of the system. I can’t say whether this will become a classic like those films – I guess TBS will be the judge of that when they get broadcast rights – but it was an enjoyable film none the less.

B/B+