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Romance the best track of ‘Infinite Playlist’
I wouldn’t necessarily put Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist on repeat, but it is an amiable shuffle though the night from hell and the night of love.
However, the movie’s not quite as random as it wants to be. Playlist tries to come across like a junior version of After Hours, Martin Scorsese’s movie about an increasingly harrowing night in New York City. And this is the part of the movie that doesn’t work so well.
The night from hell begins when Nick’s ex-girlfriend Tris (Alexis Dziena) chides Norah (Kat Dennings) about not having a boyfriend. On impulse, Norah talks Nick (Michael Cera) into pretending to be her boyfriend. A spark flies. Then the night gets truly messy when Norah’s buddy Caroline (Ari Graynor) gets wasted and ends up lost in the city.
The movie has the makings of a wild comedy, but this part of the story never takes off the way it means to because it’s not wild enough. There’s little headlong rush of energy, and the filmmakers keep defusing the tension by endlessly calling back a gross gag involving Caroline’s chewing gum. Not only is this not up to After Hours, it’s not even the equal of the best teen night from hell movie, Adventures in Babysitting.
And yet, Playlist still works because the two leads are so strong. There’s never any real doubt about whether they’ll end up together or not, but that doesn’t matter much because Cera and Dennings are so winning.
Many will note Cera is playing basically the same lovable geek he portrayed in Superbad and Juno, but he works very well with the tart-tongued Dennings, who was a strong presence in The House Bunny. Norah’s sarcasm may be her hook, but what makes her a keeper is how unique and touchingly vulnerable she really is. When she and Cera realize they’re in for the long haul, that’s the best scene of the picture.
Some people have called the movie “this year’s Juno”, but other than the fact that both star Michael Cera and both center around teenagers and a romance, the two films are pretty much nothing alike. No one’s going to call a 2009 movie “This year’s Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist,” but it’s still good enough to stand on its own.
GRADE: B
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