Nick & Norah's Infinite Review

Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist is a strange little piece that has, simultaneously, both a whole lot and a whole lot of nothing going for it. Important filmic elements - plot, believability, any sort of depth to any of the characters not named Nick or Norah -- are thrown to the side in favor of less weighty things, like tone and mood. And in all these respects, it manages to fail and succeed simultaneously.

What Nick & Norah has going for it is a feeling. Even if you don’t like the music, even if you’re not from the East Coast, even if you never spent all night looking for a band named Where’s Fluffy, you’ll understand where in their lives these characters are: that space in high school where nothing matters, but everything carries such weight; where the future is so far away but closing in fast; where you can spend a night bouncing around with your friends, driving from place to place with only the loosest sense of a plan, and it somehow manages to become the greatest time in the world.

Because that’s what this movie is about. Nick (Michael Cera) is the emo-boy from high school, just out of a relationship, in a band, and trying to win back the emotionally manipulative ex-girlfriend. Norah (Kat Dennings) is the counterpoint to said ex-girlfriend, a down-on-herself beauty who hasn’t figured out that attitude, not presentation, is 50% of the battle. Before they meet the two are connected through Nick’s sad-sack mixed-CDs for the ex that Norah rescues from the garbage (the one we see her snag at the beginning is titled “ROAD TO CLOSURE, VOL. 12”). It’s only in New York City at a club that the two fall in together and spend the rest of the movie being all teen-angsty. Over the course of the night we follow them through their trials and tribulations to find the secret show of THE GREATEST BAND IN THE HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE, Where’s Fluffy.

And that’s it. That’s the story. Oh, of course, there are side-journeys, like any high school adventure worth its weight. The two meet up with Tal (Jay Baruchel, pretty much completely wasted), Norah’s on-again-off-again older boyfriend with benefits. He’s a one note bad-guy who doesn’t really pose any threat to Nick because we’ve seen the trailers and we know who’s getting together in the end. What did strike a chord was Norah’s quiet desperation, her willingness to throw herself back on this totally lame-ass dude simply because she doesn’t know any better -- she’s at that age where she hasn’t quite put all the pieces together and realized that, contrary to popular belief, sometimes no attention is better than bad attention. I knew a lot of girls like Norah in high school, and a lot of them did exactly the same thing.

Nick too, reminded me a lot of guys I knew back in the day, though his continued refusal to try and woo Norah through out the film in the hopes of reuniting with his (pathetic and annoying) ex struck me as a little dumb. Lord knows that any teenage guy I knew who was no longer in a relationship would have leapt at the chance to get cozy with a chick as funny, pretty, and stacked (pardon my wordage) as Norah.

Of course, though, he comes around, and after more adventures trying to find Norah’s totally-wasted friend, a trip to a gay-Christmas gala, a recording studio, car wrecks, dirty dancing, and the weird tension with Nick’s gay band mates, the titular duo get together and live happily ever after. Or, you know, go to college an hour from each other.

Despite the weaknesses, Kat Dennings and Michael Cera hold the film together with their charm, and the piece as a whole displays the kind of whimsical carelessness that epitomizes the upper/middle class high school experience. This movie is nostalgia for the Millennial generation that’s left high school... a reminder of what our youth was, and the whimsical fairy tale we’d like our lives to be.

-RoboNixon