Do you even know your daughter?!

Rating: Null/10 (15 March 2002)

From the onset lemme say that I have read the Nick Hornby novel and seen this film twice. There are people out there who have an aversion to this film because the book is set in London and the film is set in America which seems to imply some kind of sacrilege. I must say that I was one of the more optimistic, especially with John Cusack's involvement as behind the scenes as well as in the forefront. I thoroughly enjoyed the film, it achieves one of those rare feats in that it is as good as the film. John Cusack has been doing melancholy from the beginning,One Crazy Summer, Say Anything spring to mind, but he has made that successful transistion from teen to adulthood, eloquently seen in Gross Pointe Blank.
This film embraces the fact that the shop, Championship Vinyl, is not based prominantly in a high street, but in a back road on North London, hence this translates to a back road in America and it translates well, nowhere in evidence is the feared American gaudiness, but the evidence that everyone involved was very aware and handled said material with care.
This film achieves the rare feat of inviting you into a characters life and before you realise it, you are concerned with their welfare and what happens. Also the humour is not played with a heavy hand, there are genuine laugh out loud moments, one of the side splitting moments are the 3 imagined confrontations with the new age Tim Robbins.
It's a love story,a real love story, hell I am going one further and saying that this is a life story, we know people like these, we have friends who have these relationships and it makes a change to see reality on screen. Bravo to Nick Hornby for the book and John Cusack for another great movie.