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By David Ansen
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Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable, or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?" wonders vinyl junkie Rob (John Cusack), the romantically damaged, self-obsessed and very funny hero of "High Fidelity." The owner of a barely surviving Chicago record store, Rob has two obsessions in life--music, and the women who have rejected him. Rob has an encyclopedic memory for every humiliation he has suffered, going back to grammar school, but his recall is faulty when it comes to the pain he's inflicted himself. The latest to leave is Laura (Iben Hjejle). She has not yet made his top-five list of painful breakups, but as soon as he hears that she has taken up with a pony-tailed creep (Tim Robbins) who used to live upstairs, she makes the grade. "Number five with a bullet," Rob tells us.
Nick Hornby's novel was set in London. Screenwriters D. V. DeVincentis, Steve Pink, Cusack and Scott Rosenberg wittily reset it in Chicago, and Stephen Frears directs with unassuming brio. "High Fidelity" is a sympathetic but unusually incisive portrait of the stunted male ego, perpetually trapped in an adolescent tape loop of sexual insecurity, paranoia and fantasy. Rob--who pours out his woes directly to the camera, taking us into his confidence--is a deeply flawed guy, but it's impossible not to like him or cheer him on as he stumbles his way into belated adulthood. Cusack is a master at playing smart, frazzled, self-flagellating hipsters, and the movie, propelled by his arias of angst, lets him strut his best stuff.
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Cusack may be in every scene, but he's not the only source of hilarity. At his store, he is saddled with two employees so far gone in their musical geekdom as to make Rob seem a model of sanity. Todd Louiso, as the pale, tremulous, socially retarded Dick, and Jack Black, as the bullying, volatile musical snob Barry, are the movie's inspired Laurel and Hardy. Among the women past and present in Rob's life are Lili Taylor, Lisa Bonet, Joelle Carter and Catherine Zeta-Jones, all of whom shine. But it's Hjejle's slightly chilly Laura, an intriguing mix of masculine and feminine, about whom Rob obsesses like a broken record. Can he win her back? This romantic-comedy trope is the least compelling part of the movie: there's no great spark between the actors. Even so, "High Fidelity" never feels formulaic. It's an inside job, refreshingly specific. You don't feel there were armies of studio execs breathing down the filmmakers' necks, trying to reach for the lowest common denominator. "It wasn't spectacular," Rob reminisces about first meeting Laura. "Just good--really good." The same could be said for "High Fidelity."
High FidelityDisney
Opens March 31
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