HIGH FIDELITY (director: Stephen Frears; Screenwriters: D.V. DeVincentis/Steve Pink/ John Cusack/ Scott Michael Rosenberg/based on the novel by Nick Hornby; cinematographer: Seamus McGarvey; editor: Mick Audsley; cast: John Cusack (Rob Gordon), Iben Hjejle (Laura), Todd Louiso (Dick), Jack Black (Barry), Lisa Bonet (Marie De Salle), Catherine Zeta-Jones (Charlie), Joan Cusack (Liz), Tim Robbins (Ian), Shannon Stillo (Alison), Joelle Carter (Penny), Lili Taylor (Sarah), Natasha Gregson Wagner (Caroline), 2000)
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
John Cusack as Rob Gordon, is a neurotic, 30-something year old who hasn't grown up. He is the Chicago record store owner of Championship Vinyl, carrying CD's and vinyl lp's for musical connoisseurs, in a small store that is barely surviving. This wormy role is one that he has been seemingly typecast for in most of his films to date. His narcissistic performance totally grossed-me out, even though I liked a few things about this feel-good, quirky movie, but whose plot could have been better explored if it was discovered what the plot was and whose story would have been given more credence if it had a sharper script, a better sense of pacing, and less screen time for the annoying Cusack character. Cusack spent nearly ninety percent of the film's time looking right at the camera and explaining to the audience what he was thinking and doing, as if the story was made for an Einstein-type and needed to be decifered to the under-thirty something audience targeted to see this film.
Rob is griping to the camera about his failures in romance, and in imitation of the David Letterman's TV show shtick of making lists to elicit laughs from the audience, Rob is prone to making Top 5 lists, having recently completed his "Top 5 all-time breakups", going through those he most clearly recalls, giving the audience a running narration on each of those romances. He starts with a junior high school kissing marathon in the baseball field's bleachers with Allison (Stillo), that lasted six hours, before he was dumped for another boy. Next he reminisces about the sexy Charlie (Catherine Zeta-Jones), who can't stop talking and saying inane things, which he found amusing at the time, as he wondered why someone as stunning as she is would go out with him. Then there is Penny (Carter), someone who won't give him sex, so he dumps her. There is also his breakup with the sweet Sarah (Lili Taylor). By gosh, what is this fine comedic actress doing in this film, and to the bargain, taking such a miniscule part!
Even though, he can't quite admit it yet, his present breakup might be the hardest one for him to recover from, since his lawyer girlfriend might be the one he was always looking for. Laura (Iben Hjejle-a Danish actress making her American debut) is the best thing about this film. Her lips are of a succulent ruby red color, and when she pouts or a small smile comes over her, there is a very sensuous crease that comes over her mouth and chin area-- plus she has a nice laugh and cries in a dignified manner when she has to. She stops being Rob's live-in lover as the film opens, moving out of his music-fanatic decorated pad, because he's a drip, has no ambition, and failed to commit to her. She moves in with the upstair's neighbor, Ian (Tim Robbins), who is another drip, though of the "new age" type, who does crises intervention therapy, and is adorned with earrings and a ponytail.
What the film does well, is capture the nostalgia and musty atmosphere of a place where music geeks hang-out, memorizing tunes and reciting them back-and-forth to each other, as if they were idiot savants who overdosed on sugar. The picture is stolen by the two snobbish musical clerks who inhabit Rob's store as if it were the Vatican of the music world, and those not up to snuff with their elitist thinking on musical taste are snubbed by them. Jack Black is Barry, the more hostile and comically inclined of the two, who is a burst of loudness in the dead sea of music trivia. He's a Van Morrison clone without the singer's voice or forebearance or manners. His other partner and fellow expert in pop culture music, is the more timid but equally snobbish, Dick (Todd Louiso). Without these two, you wouldn't have had a film about music geeks--but a film about a monologue of Cusack talking to Cusack, interupted only when he talks to the other Cusack in the film, his sister. The clerks' attitude toward the customers was brusque, but the exchanges that resulted were very dear. In one encounter, with a middle-aged man wanting to buy for his daughter's birthday Stevie Wonder's "I Just Called to Say I Love You", Barry disapproves the choice, telling the would-be customer that they have the record but he won't sell it to him, that he should go to the mall: "That the only way his daughter would like that song, is if she were in a coma."
In keeping with the spirit of the film, I made a Top 5 list of things I liked about the film and a more involved Top 5 list of things that I didn't like about the film.
First what I liked: 1. The soundtrack kicked ass. 2. The two musical geek clerks were funnier than Batman and Robin in hell. 3. I didn't have to pronounce Iben Hjejle's name to know what I liked about her. 4. Lisa Bonet made up for her inconsequential part and gratuitous sex scene by adding a beautiful song to the film and a warm presence to a story that wasn't that hot to begin with. 5. I can count on my left hand how many films were made about geek music-store clerks who work in musical stores that are not in a mall.
What I didn't like: 1. John Cusack is either a putz or someone who is acting like a putz, but in either case, I can't handle watching a needlessly long film (over two hours) such as this one, with someone as self-absorbed as he is, without getting a headache. 2. The story seemed to be a never-ending one, where there were at least three times that I thought the movie had wound down and was about to conclude. Instead, the movie got a second wind and added more banal storyline to keep it going. It seemed to be poorly edited and written with a few different endings in mind and failed to make its rewrites seamless. The result is a very shoddy film, even if it is adapted from a popular cult comic novel of the same name written by Nick Hornsby. The film has not been improved by changing the setting from London to Chicago, and as far as I'm concerned, it could have been set in Mars or Venus, with the same results gleaned. 3. The love angle was predictable and wimpy. I couldn't stand to see Cusack begging and carrying on to worm his way back into the relationship with Laura. I was rooting for him, against all odds, to be left out in the cold and rain by the end of the movie without a girlfriend. But this was formula sitcom stuff all the way, as all three music geeks got some reward for their long-suffering for the art of nostalgia and trivia and useless knowledge. Barry got a band together and, my main man, Dick, he got himself a girlfriend, and of course, Cusack, he got the first prize, Iben. 4. For a movie that is about growing up, maturing, and handling relationships, somehow the characters didn't particularly make me interested in how any of their relationships were resolved. 5. I felt used by this film. They made me listen to Cusack go into his heavy neurotic spiel, pretending to be a loser, while all the time he was really an insensitive manipulator of women, who was sneaky in getting his way with all the women he went out with. And I had to listen to him kvetch for the entire film and I'm not even a psychoanalyst who gets paid to hear such dribble but a long-suffering movie critic who was bored to death by this very forgettable pop culture movie and couldn't wait for the session (uh! movie) to end.
REVIEWED ON 4/23/2000 GRADE: C-
Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews"
http://www.sover.net/~ozus
ozus@sover.net
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