Unresolved relationships can be like those mildly irritating but fiendishly catchy pop songs you sometimes come across while listening to the radio: Try as you might, you just can't get them out of your mind.
For record store owner Rob (John Cusack), the tune he can't shake off is his former girlfriend Laura (Iben Hjejle), who recently moved out of the dumpy apartment they shared with his racks of vintage vinyl and CDs. "You haven't changed so much as a pair of socks since I met you," Laura sighed, and she's not far off the mark. Rob, as readers of Nick Hornby's novel "High Fidelity" know, is one of those guys who's struggling to hold on to his youth by staying poor, avoiding heavy responsibilities and hanging out with slackers and semi-slackers who want nothing more out of life than to join a garage band or find a mint-condition mono copy of Bob Dylan's "Blonde on Blonde." In many ways, Rob is a quintessential Cusack hero. Although he's reasonably bright, he over-analyzes every aspect of his life, and despite having some ambition, he seems incapable of focusing his energy.
To some extent, "High Fidelity" has exactly the same problem. The screenplay is almost fervently faithful to the book, but what was breezy and funny on the page doesn't always play out. Trying to transfer Hornby's first-person narrative to the screen, Cusack and three other scripters have given Rob lots of breaking-the-fourth-wall monologues that bog down what little momentum the story has.
The movie also mistakenly moves the action from Hornby's mid-1990s London to contemporary Chicago. The novel's very British attitude (all those suppressed emotions, all those worries about class differences) doesn't survive the journey, and if "High Fidelity" is ultimately about anything, it's about attitude.
What the film does manage to put across is the enticing atmosphere of an independent music shop, where clerks argue over whether the Righteous Brothers' version of "Little Latin Lupe Lu" is better than Mitch Ryder's cover and band names like Sigue Sigue Sputnik and Stiff Little Fingers actually mean something to the customers. If you've spent any time working or shopping in such a place, you'll completely identify with Rob and his buddies.
"High Fidelity" also scores some laughs with cameos by a ponytailed Tim Robbins (as a Steven Seagal wannabe), Catherine Zeta-Jones (as a chic but bubbleheaded former flame of Rob's) and even Bruce Springsteen, who drops by to offer much-needed advice on affairs of the heart. Cusack is his usual agreeable self -- think of Lloyd Dobler from "Say Anything" on the edge of 30 -- and the soundtrack, featuring artists ranging from Stereolab to Stevie Wonder, is delicious ear candy.
If movies were rated on the 100-point scale "American Bandstand" used to use for records, "High Fidelity" would probably score a 50: It doesn't have much of a beat and you can't really dance to it, but it's way better than that new Celine Dion disc. James Sanford
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