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Actors: John Cusack, Jack Black
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| Review Summary and Plot Commentary about High Fidelity |
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John Cusack stars in a romantic comedy about love and quarter-life identity. After Rob Burton (Cusack), the manager of a record store, loses the his girlfriend Laura (Iben Hjejle), he categorizes his love life into humorous lists. In an effort to understand his failed relationships, he obsesses over these lists and contacts his past lovers. Jack Black plays his insensitive, obnoxious friend, who knows even less about love. Rob wonders where he went wrong, until a family tragedy gives him a new perspective and understanding.
--Erica Whitney, Resident Scholar
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Rob Gordon (Cusack) owns a record store that is failing. Incidentally so is his relationship with his current girlfriend, Laura (newcomer Hjejle). When she walks out on him, Rob is forced to look back over his list of his top five memorable break ups to figure out if he is doomed to remain a failure at love.
--Patti Illsley, Resident Scholar
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Rob Gordon (Cusack), a thirties-something in Chicago who owns a small alternative record store in a bad neighborhood, has just lost his latest girlfriend Laura (Hjelje), a yuppie lawyer who has hooked up with a brainy New Age type upstairs (Robbins). Rob thinks about his "Top 5 Break-ups" (seen in hilarious flashbacks), and assures himself that Laura wouldn't make the list. He also commiserates with his two store employees, shy Dick (Todd Louiso) and brassy, rude Barry (Black), who tends to browbeat potential customers. Transferred from the British setting of Nick Hornby's 1995 novel (Cusack helped with the screenplay), and briskly directed by Stephen Frears, this 2000 romantic comedy has no deep significance but is very satisfying -- especially with its first significant exposure of manic Black.
--David Loftus, Resident Scholar
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John Cusack plays the owner of a record store who can't commit to his live-in girlfriend of years. She moves out in disgust and he obsessively, hilariously reviews all of his bad break-ups, directly addressing the camera, and tries to figure out what went wrong in each case. In the meantime his two bizarre employees (of whom one is Jack Black) are giving him all kinds of grief in the record store, as he seeks a relationship that will always be exciting and new. Magnificent soundtrack, lots of brilliantly geeky record-store-clerk conversations about records and movies, an uplifting ending that doesn't soften the film's cynical, ironic stance, and a magnificent scene in which Jack Black tells a customer why his daughter really doesn't like Stevie Wonder.
--Juniper Glimpse, Resident Scholar
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| Analysis of High Fidelity |
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Ratings are on a 1-10 scale (Low to High)
Plot
Comedy, primarily
Yes
Time/era of movie:
- 1980's-1999
Kind of comedy
- "Clerks" style comedy
Main Character
Identity:
- Male
Profession/status:
- small businessman
Age:
- 20's-30's
Is this an ordinary person caught up in events?
Yes
Hair color?
- brunette (Black)
Hair type
- (man) short/standard straight
Body type
- (man) average
Events of movie makes character more...
- sensitive
Ethnicity/Nationality
- White (American)
How sensitive is this character?
- middling sensitive to others' feelings
Sense of humor?
- Cynical sense of humor
Intelligence
- Smarter than most other characters
Physique
- average physique
- healthy but a geeky weakling
Secondary Main Character
Identity:
- Male
Hair color
- brunette (Brown)
Hair style
- (man) short/standard curly
Body type
- (man) fat
Ethnicity/Nationality
- White (American)
Setting
United States
Yes
The US:
- Midwest
City?
Yes
City:
- New York
- dirty, grimy (like New York)
- rude people
- Chicago
Misc setting
- bar
Style
Accounts of torture and death?
- no torture/death
Movie makes you feel...
- very happy
- full of laughter
Sex/nudity in movie?
Yes
What kind of sex:
- kissing
- sex under blankets
Any profanity?
- Occasional swearing
- Some foul language
If soundtrack VERY NOTICEABLE...
- Modern rock/pop
Is this movie based on a
- book
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Note: the views expressed here are only those of the reviewer(s). | |
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