A Tasty Ham on Wry Sandwich

Rating: 8/10 (23 December 2005)

To derive maximum enjoyment from this film, you must (a) be male, (b) have gone through an extended period of trying to figure out why you couldn't keep a girlfriend (c) love a talky, monologous movie. Women who find John Cusack adorable will also like this film.
There are three major selling points for High Fidelity. The first is the novel technique of mixing 1/3 traditional narrative with 2/3 talking directly to the audience (that's "breaking the fourth wall" for you dramatists). Usually, I hate this technique, because it indicates a lazy/untalented scriptwriter who couldn't figure out how to get his points across skillfully. But the technique works here (for the most part), because the script is intelligent. It made me remember back to the dreadful period in my and my friend's lives where we experimented to reconcile our preconceptions of relationships with what we actually wanted, and what the women we dated seemed to want (they were doing the same thing, you know).
But a good script needs good execution, and Cusack's believability and likability are the film's second selling point. By the time he'd made High Fidelity, Cusack had perfected the blending of being earnest and wry. In fact, I think Julliard has added a "Ham on Wry" course just to study his technique. In this film, he adds the right amount of youthful, rebellious surliness required for his character. His skills as a monologist are impressive, and I'd like to see him take to the stage for a show.
The third selling point is the performances of the supporting cast. Rob and his two record store employees (who show up twice as often as Rob hired them for) are pop music snobs who desperately need to develop their lives. Todd Louiso, plays Dick, the painfully shy and nerdy clerk, pitch perfect. Jack Black scores a bullseye with his obnoxious-funny characterization. (Several times, Joy or I looked at each other after one of his despicable bits and said "justifiable homicide," to which the other nodded.) And Iben Hjejle (no, I don't know how to pronounce this) plays a remarkably complex, level-headed, and unbitter girlfriend with the right amount of maturity and straightness necessary to convince us that Rob might want to grow up enough to be with her.
The only nit I'll pick is the absence of rap and hip-hop from the musical vocabulary of the movie. Even if Rob and his buddies hated the genre, they couldn't deny its impact or sales figures. But the film ignores this musical and social category entirely, for reasons never explained.