Pop Classic

Rating: Null/10 (19 July 2000)

In High Fidelity, John Cusack plays Rob - the 35-ish owner of Championship Vinyl, a second-hand record store in Chicago. He's just been dumped by his girlfriend Laura (Iben Hjejle), and proceeds to recount to us his Top 5 hardest-to-get-over breakups to try and understand where he's going wrong. But first he poses a conundrum - do I listen to pop songs (which are mostly about heartbreak) because of my failure in love, or am I failing at love because I listen to too many pop songs?
Like the Nick Hornby novel it's faithfully based on, High Fidelity is smart and funny, and gives an intelligent insight into how men think and feel when it comes to love. It's full of sharp characterisations, with a perfect Jack Black and Todd Louiso as Rob's obsessive and opinionated store employees, Lisa Bonet playing singer Marie DeSalle, appearances by Tim Robbins, Catherine Zeta-Jones (uncredited) and Joan Cusack (NOT playing Rob's sister!), and a cameo by Bruce Springsteen. The writers (and four are credited, including Cusack) took a risk transplanting (what seemed to be) a quintessentially British book from London to Chicago, but they've done it with care and carried it off.
This is a labour of love for Cusack (who also co-produced) and it's the best work I've ever seen him do. He talks straight to camera a lot of the time and he's so earnest, so enthusiastic that I found his incarnation of Rob impossible to resist. Thanks to Cusack, most of the audience will recognise even Rob's most deplorable behaviour; hell, some of us will even relate to it.