Nick and Norah's Infinate Playlist

Given my unabashed loved for all things twee I had to see this movie. And I had to love it irrationally. I am sure I will watch this movie again when it comes out on DVD in a long movie night featuring as many movies as I can find that have something to do allowing trendy music to control our hearts and bring us together. That said, this movie is too full of lost potential for me to be truly happy watching it.

The whole plot involves Michael Cera (played with much grace by Mr. Cera) getting over his manipulative ex, hooking up with Kat Dennings, and getting to see a band that is playing after hours in a mystery location. There is also some wackiness with Kat's Courtney Love-esque friend, MC's gay bandmates, and a lame Jewish band. So it is basically set up to be the perfect into the night movie.

The movie fails many ways, but lets focus on the two aspects of the movie that could most easily be improved.

The paths of the characters:

With a premise like trying to find where the best twee band in NYC is playing should have been the biggest focus of the movie in terms of motivations for each of the hipster characters. MC and Kat (Nick and Norah) seem to be using the quest to find Fluffy as the excuse to learn about each other rather than simply being thrown together by the forces of the night to search for the band and fall in love at the same time. This leads to frustrating scenes where the characters are in fact building a connection, but through brute force alone.

Zanny sidequests are bound to happen, but that really should have been left to sidekicks, who were used quite well for the first part of the movie but then suddenly become nothing more than a plot mechanism to find Fluffy without even any work. I point to Superbad's McLovin for how to use the sidekick in a movie like this. They should interact as almost coincidentally connected stories that don't really have to help solve the primary conflict. They just need to provide that bridge the main characters can use to reach their destination.

The music:

While I am happy that Mark Mothersbaugh took care of the original music. The "playlist" was never stressed enough. In a post Garden State age movies about music really need a soundtrack that "will change your life."

I am no music expert. I can barely make myself listen to the newest Jenny Lewis album, much less any kind of truly underground stuff. But I expect the filmmaker to at least have a friend that might be able to do this sort of thing. I need a list of songs by bands that should be popular and will be thanks to this movie. This would drive up the cred of the movie.

The music also should have been a bigger topic of conversation. The one time they really get into talking about music in a deep way is a conversation about The Cure ("More like The Cause."). If these people are such music geeks who are brought together because of their love of music then we need to see that.



Oh, and more bands should have bunnies as their symbols.