High Fidelity

Welcome to the Two-Hour John Cusack Monologue, featuring the type of romantic hysteria and pop-culture skewerings that only the king of sardonic loserdom can carry off successfully.

At times, that is.

John Cusack has sadly become too hip for his own good. He's successfully mastered a combination of both self-deprecating honesty and glib irony that have made his characters accessible but yet intelligently sexy. That worked well for his confused hit man in Grosse Pointe Blank...it was even endearing in Say Anything, one of the '80s finest romantic teen comedies. But a constant barrage of sheer irony where every line is delivered with that eyebrow raising cleverness soon wears out its welcome. And displays an unfortunate lack of versatility. Just ask Matthew Perry's Chandler Bing. Sarcasm works in small, well placed doses.

Having said that, I must concede that I don't know any other way that High Fidelity, the best-selling novel by Nick Hornby, could have been translated to the big screen. It's one huge interior monologue by Rob Gordon, a shaggy-haired lovable loser who prides himself on his knowledge of music, his smarmy top-five lists and the ability to make great compilation tapes. Soliloquies don't transfer well to film, so what you get is a whole lotta Cusack talking to the camera. And fans of the novel won't like that it's set in Chicago rather than London.

It's when Cusack isn't winking at the camera that the movie features its most interesting moments. Gordon, a college drop-out, is one of those geeky-hip bohemian intellectuals who owns an independent record store, "Championship Vinyl." You know the type. Vintage clothing, promo t-shirts, and lots of insider music advice about how the Propellerheads aren't really hard-core techno and Green Day only knows how to play three guitar chords.

He employs two weirdos, one a soft-spoken Todd Louiso and the other, Barry (a hysterically boisterous Jack Black) who are equally as snobby about their musical tastes. Barry is in fact a musical fascist who does much to scare away customers with "bad taste" to the nearest Virgin Megastore. When they're not taunting Stevie Wonder fans, they're making lists like the "top five songs about death." That's as bad as film critics sitting around discussing the nuances of surrealism in Fellini films.

As for the romantic hysteria, Gordon spends most of his time mooning about in rain scenes pondering his list of flaky girlfriends who have dumped him, including his last one, Laura (Iben Hjejle). This isn't particularly romantic and unfortunately takes up most of the screen time. But there is a cameo by Bruce Springsteen, who dispenses relationship advice to the love-lorn Gordon.

Old folks certainly won't like the shallow romance or the obscure music references, but if you can take the overdose of super-cool hipness long enough to appreciate its blithe humor, maybe you too can learn to be an underappreciated Film Snob.