| Overall Grade: |
B+ |
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| Story: |
B+ |
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| Acting: |
A- |
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| Direction: |
B |
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| Visuals: |
B |
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An Ode to Depression
by Yahoo! Movies User (movies profile)
Nov 28, 2005
1
of
2 people found this review helpful
From a standpoint of the script and the acting, I loved High Fidelity. I loved the bitter dialouge of John Cusack's character Rob ("Do I listen to records because I'm miserable, or am I miserable because I listen to records?" is almost as good as a line as "I gave her my heart. She gave me a pen" in Say Anything). I loved the acting, especially Jack Black as a worker at the record store Rob owns. I loved the conversations between the three record-store workers. But a few things could've been fixed to make it a classic.
The movie starts off with heart-broken Rob telling us his top 5 biggest break-ups with flashbacks. His current girlfriend Laura is slipping under his thumbs but Rob doesn't care. He's too used to break-ups for it to hurt him. So Rob spends his time at the record store with his two music-loving geek friends, and messing around with a club singer (Lisa Bonet). But after Laura starts going out with a karate instructor named Ian (Tim Robbins) does he realize he's not getting over Laura anytime soon. He tries to bring closure to himself by reuniting with the four girls on his break-up list, but nothing seems to work. Rob is in love.
I was impressed not only by the adaptation of Nick Hornby's novel, but also by all the intelligence of the music-related dialouge. Among some of the great bands mentioned are Stiff Little Fingers, Madness, Velvet Underground, and Green Day. I also really liked Jack Black in this movie.
My complaints with the movie are that there are many secondary characters that could've been trimmed. For example, Rob's friend Liz (Joan Cusack) has little to no screen time in the movie and doesn't leave much of an impression. I also thought that the skateboarding punks Rob eventually helps are also unneeded. And the end takes the all-too-easy Hollywood way out. The whole somber tone is destroyed at the end of the movie. But High Fidelity is an intellient romantic comedy, perfect to watch with that significant other. |
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