I saw Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist so you don't have to

I went to see Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist by myself on Friday. I knew the movie had potential to, um, SUCK, but sometimes going to a matinee by yourself isn’t always for the film that will change your life. It’s for the film that no one will go see with you and/or the film that you want to go and see guilt-free. So I went for the reasons that it was a romantic vehicle for Michael Cera, whom I will admit to a teensy old lady crush on, and a film by the director of Raising Victor Vargas (a movie I absolutely loved).

It was exactly as I suspected it to be: a weakly strewn together story, glued together by a heavily pronounced soundtrack of bands you either know or will lie and say you’ve been listening to them for years. It reminded me so much of the 80’s teen movies of my youth, where the combination of meaningful moments, acted by a cast you felt IN with, amongst a soundtrack that kicked ass created an instant autobiographical reference. There’s a scene in Nick & Norah when the band Bishop Allen comes on the stage and it was so directly an echo of a scene in Valley Girl, where the band The Plimsouls that plays “A Million Miles Away,” while Julie and Randy fall madly in love, that it made me laugh out loud. However, Michael Cera, at times a brilliant comedic actor, ain’t no John Cusack and that’s a hard pill to swallow, when you are wishing throughout the movie to fall in love and root for his Nick. Many of you, like me, will go see this movie for Michael Cera, but you will STAY because of Kat Dennings. She is the heart and soul of this movie and may be the answer to smart, sarcastic, unseen, but beautiful girls everywhere. There is something about her the reaches toward The Every Girl and you believe her, despite her incredible (did I say INCREDIBLE?) beauty. It isn’t an alienating, perfection, Barbie/Gossip Girl kind of beauty, but an honest and natural glamour mixed with a toughness and a kind of smarts that make me not only relate to her, but feel like I’ve known her.

On the way home, I kept thinking about what did and didn’t work with the movie. Frankly, I am SO HAPPY there is finally a teen movie where gay boys hang with straight boys and there isn’t one utterance of the word ‘fag’ between them. If only Dennings’ Norah didn’t live the high hipster New York club life or have a famous dad, she could be the center of my dream movie directed by Jane Apatow and Nick would not be at the center of it, but a peripheral guy that gets it and somehow gets her in the end. But alas, it is what it is, but I definitely have a new crush. Move over Michael Cera, there is a new girl in town.