High Fidelity **** (2000, John Cusack, Jack Black, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Iben Hjejle, Todd Louiso, Lisa Bonet, Joan Cusack, Tim Robbins) – Classic Movie Review 876

Director Stephen Frears’s amusing and very popular 2000 comedy High Fidelity stars John Cusack as Rob Gordon, the 30-something owner of the Championship Vinyl record shop, who reminisces about his lost loves.

It is the slightly surprising 2001 American Film Institute Award winner for Movie of the Year, praising ‘an offbeat odyssey about a 30-something record store owner who knows everything about pop music but nothing about life. A terrific ensemble cast includes music as a central character. The film effortlessly breaks the fourth wall and, rather than shoe-horning its quirky characters into a tidy resolution, chooses a real world ending.’

Stephen Frears directs a genial, often enjoyable, though sometimes irritating, romantic comedy, co-starring Iben Hjejle as Laura Lydon, Rob Gordon’s long-standing girlfriend.

Nick Hornby’s British novel is successfully relocated from its London setting to Chicago, but the Cusack character is not nearly as appealing as Cusack seems to think he is and Jack Black is a total annoyance as his pop-music junkie buddy. However, Cusack plays the hero well in what has turned out to be one of his most memorable performances, and he was Golden Globe nominated for Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture – Comedy or Musical. By 2018, and this is also slightly surprising, this is his only actor nomination, with nothing from the Oscar people. Catherine Zeta-Jones appears as Charlie Nicholson, unbilled, with disappointingly little to do.

There is a great soundtrack with many vintage tracks, and the music includes a new Bob Dylan original Most of the Time (written and performed by Bob Dylan), Elvis Costello and The Attractions’s Shipbuilding (written by Elvis Costello and Clive Langer) and Elton John’s Crocodile Rock (written by Elton John and Bernie Taupin), and Bruce Springsteen appears (he writes and performs The River).

High Fidelity also features in the cast Joan Cusack, Tim Robbins, Lisa Bonet, Todd Louiso, Lili Taylor and Natasha Gregson Wagner, Ben Carr, Chris Rehmann, Joelle Carter, Shannon Stillo, Drake Bell, Laura Whyte, Sara Gilbert, Rich Talarico, Matt O’Neill, Margaret Travolta and Dick Cusack.

The screenplay, which was Bafta nominated for Best Screenplay – Adapted, is by D V DeVincentis, Steve Pink, John Cusack and Scott Rosenberg, adapting the novel by Nick Hornby.

The highly talented Stephen Frears also directed My Beautiful Laundrette, Prick Up Your Ears, Dangerous Liaisons, Dirty Pretty Things, The Queen, Philomena and The Program (2015), Florence Foster Jenkins and Victoria & Abdul.

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© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 876

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