CO-STARS Outshine Cusack in this self absorbed comedy

Rating: 6/10 (2 April 2000)

The co-stars (too many too list) who play in this romantic-comedy-I-guess, are far more interesting than our central character played by Cusack. Cusack plays a record store owner who spends the whole movie whining about his failed love life. For the first 40 minutes of it, I hung in there, waiting for our main character to show SOME character. After that, I begin to look at my watch.
The problem with High Fidelity, is that our main character is too much of jerk to like. He is totally selfish and immature for his age and his habits are a complete afront to women. I was okay with that, at first. But a shallow main character can't carry a picture all the way through without showing SOME promise along the way. This is supposed to be OUR guy. We are supposed to be rooting for him the whole way through. But after awhile, I just wished that one of his many ex-girlfriends would have shot him in the head and put us all out of our misery. John Cusack's character has no perspective or enough depth to carry a movie. John, GET A REAL PROBLEM.
I was insulted, because Cusack was potraying someone my age and it just makes our generation look useless. Cusack finally does get his act together at the VERY END of the movie. Not soon enough. And I never really believed he was a lover of music. He didn't have the passion for it the way his employees at the record store did. They were believable. Cusack could have been a shoe salesman for all we know. He says a few snappy lines about music trivia and owns a lot of vinyl, but he just doesn't "fit" the part. He would have been more believable if he cut his hair, put on a suit and played a RECORD LABEL EXECUTIVE.
THANK GOD for his co-stars. They were excellently cast and offered plenty of comic relief to break up the monotony of Cusack's pathetic love life and his journey to "find himself". If they had let this movie play dark all the way through and then killed Cusack at the end, I would have liked it better. But the Hollywood ending was so cliche I wanted to VOMIT PROFUSELY. They spend the whole movie trying to sound "INDIE" and they have that cheesy ending...
LOTS OF SHALLOW LAUGHS, BUT IGNORE CUSACK.