NICK AND NORAH’S INFINITE PLAYLIST (2008)
Tagline: This October, Press Play.
(Comedy, Drama, Music) [PG-13]
Yeah, *I* am a great friend. It's always been like this. I'm the squire in Caroline's quest for attention.
So in this one, the main idea is for everyone involved to try and find out where this band called “Where’s Fluffy?” is playing. They leave clues throughout the night and basically end up playing at around 4am or so. Nick is just out of a breakup with Tris, but she is still toying with his mind. Meanwhile, Norah, a friend of Tris runs into Nick while his band is playing as a night of craziness begins. As the night moves along Nick and Norah who at first can’t stand each other come to find that they have a lot more in common than they first imagined.
First off Nick in this movie is the main character along with Norah in case the title wasn’t clear on that. Nick is played by Michael Cera who can be hit and miss for me as an actor but is mostly hit (he is best known for SCOTT PILGRIM VS THE WORLD). His role in this as Nick is very likable and you can kind of understand his plight as he discovers he is at the crossroads between relational substance and settling for a meaningless surface nightmare with someone that doesn’t have a moral bone in her body.
Norah is played by Kat Dennings who has become a mainstay in the MCU with roles in THOR and THOR: THE DARK WORLD and more. This is a good effort out of her and her character is very likable along with Nick’s. What I really liked about this movie is that these two are people you root for and you want things to work out for them. I really don’t care for the rest of the cast, but Nick’s bandmates are cool, especially Thom who kind of serves as the band's “Jedi” or “compass” so to speak. Alexis Dziena is okay as Tris, Nick’s ditzy ex-girlfriend, and Jay Baruchel who plays Norah’s “friend who wants her” is also just okay in this. Baruchel is mostly known for being the voice of Hiccup in the HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON movies. Performance-wise no one is winning an award here, but Nick and Norah themselves are the main attraction and they are both awesome.
Where this movie kind of goes off the deep end is anything involving Caroline (played by Ari Graynor), she is the friend that basically needs adult supervision the entire movie. I mean this chick is a walking disaster and reminds me a lot of some of the idiot friends I had in high school. None of them drank around me, but they did when I wasn’t around and I was always getting calls to go rescue their goofy a---s. The amount of vomit and bubblegum nonsense in this movie is frightening.
What works is the chemistry between Nick and Norah and the whole adventure of trying to find this band while bonding over some awesome music. Not every track is amazing, but the overall soundtrack is epic. The other thing that works is just the adventure itself. It’s all kind of a call back to the days when getting to a show was a huge deal and dumb stuff was seemingly always around the corner. One thing I really identify with is the whole concept of an amazing playlist and putting together tapes or CDs with all the best stuff I could get ahold of. Even now with streaming services like Spotify, I still take my playlists seriously, it’s pretty comical. I do think they could have left out some elements, but it doesn’t kill the overall score for me.
I give this thing a 5 out of 7. If you were ever a teen trying to find your way, there will probably be something in here you can identify with.
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