Too Talky and Too Long

Rating: 6/10 (2 January 2006)

"High Fidelity" has its moments: But it meanders all over the place, has Cusack on screen talking to the audience far too often -- and it's self-indulgent. But the Danish actress, Iben Hjejle, is excellent as Cusack's girl friend and I'm sorry she hasn't chosen (or hasn't been asked) to make additional movies in America because she more than holds her own both as an actress and as a beauty. The best thing about this movie, however, is Jack Black as a clerk in Cusack's record store who won't sell to customers whose musical tastes he considers inferior (which seems to be everybody who enters the store) and Todd Luiso as another and even weirder member of Cusack's sales staff. There are cameo appearances by Catherine Zeta-Jones as one of Cusack's former girl friends, Tom Robbins as Cusack's temporary successor as Hjejle's boy friend, Lisa Bonet as a singer whose bed Cusack occupies while he's separated from Hjejle and Bruce Springsteen as himself. Whether it's Cusack, who co-produced and co-scripted the film, or Stephen Frears who directed, I don't know. But someone should have trimmed 20-30 minutes from this movie and improved it by 50 percent.