A great book turned into a mediocre movie.

Rating: Null/10 (11 May 2002)

Nick Hornby's novel 'High Fidelity' is funny, wise and much more complex than it first appears on the surface. Unfortunately Stephen Frears' movie adaptation almost completely misses the whole point. Frears, Cusack and co end up with an occasionally amusing romantic comedy with music as the "colour" or "background", rather than it being the cornerstone of the movie. Transferring the setting from the UK to the US is one thing, but to mess around with the clearly defined characters and musical tastes of Rob, Dick and Barry in such a way as to make them almost meaningless just shows how little of the book was really understood. Music is the most important thing in the world to these guys, sometimes more than relationships. Good or bad, that's the way it is. The book knows this, the movie does not. As a musical obsessive myself I could relate to the book. From this mediocre effort it seems Cusack and his three(!) co-writers did not. A major disappointment.