A Movie Not Much Worth Caring About

Rating: 6/10 (7 August 2009)

"Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist" doesn't add up to much of a movie. It's a moderately diverting tween romance about two soul mates who venture out into the New York night and figure out they're meant for one another only after a series of incidents keep them from reaching that conclusion sooner. The incidents aren't of much note; I appreciated that the film resisted the urge to descend into the outrageous scenarios films like this are prone to, but at the same time I wouldn't have minded if something, ANYTHING, had happened to our two protagonists.
Michael Cera plays Nick the way he plays every character in every film. There's something obviously appealing about Cera (after all, he keeps getting cast in roles like this), but he's only ever as good as the movie he's in, and this movie doesn't give him much to do besides look dopey and cute the way that a bedraggled puppy would look cute. Kat Dennings plays Norah, and there's something vaguely unlikable about the way she does it. She tries to give Norah an air of awkward and aloof bravado, obviously hiding the usual batch of teen insecurities, but doesn't pull it off in a way that makes her winning. If you're going to name your characters Nick and Norah in an homage to William Powell and Myrna Loy of "The Thin Man" series, you damn well better make sure they have chemistry. It's not that Cera and Dennings don't have any, they just don't have enough to make them or the movie worth caring about.
Mostly, the film just made me feel old. Is "straight edge" what kids are saying these days to describe good kids? And can a bunch of high schoolers really drive around New York City getting into any and every club they want to?
Grade: B-