High Fidelity
by Stephen Frears
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Catherine Zeta-Jones, Iben Hjejle, Jack Black, John Cusack, Todd LouisoDirector: Stephen Frears
Brand: CUSACK,JOHN
Cinematographer: Howard Shore
Composer: Lili Taylor
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; Spanish (Subtitled)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: Anamorphic Widescreen, 1.85:1
Running Time: 113 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2000-09-08
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Touchstone / Disney
Movie Reviews of High Fidelity
Movie Review: Settling for the safe route
Summary: 2 Stars
Hi Fidelity is one of the many movies that comes highly recommended and fails to deliver. In keeping with the spirit of it, however, let me present The Top Five reasons that Hi Fidelity is an average movie:
1. John Cusack. He is an actor I'm not sold on by any means despite having seen many of his films. Herein he does his Woody Allen best to talk to the audience about his failed relationships. I don't know what it is about Cusack specifically, maybe it's his weasely look, maybe it's the lack of charisma that some actors have and that others don't, or maybe it's the fact that all the smoking, hunched over slacker posing, and Intro to Drama mannerisms he employs fail to convince me that he is capable of carrying a film, especially as an adult. For comparative purposes, Jack Black steals every scene he is in, as does Catherine Zeta-Jones.
2. The film fails to deliver on either the romantic or comedic level, the two genres it's targeted towards. Not ever funny enough (save the fantasy sequence with Robbins in the record store) or romantic enough, it left me wanting so much more.
3. The premise is clogged by errors that undermine it completely. More glaring; how is it that this man of Top Five lists, who obsesses about chronicling his life and the minutiae therein into portable containers of memory, not realize until years afterward that one of his five biggest break-ups was caused by him and thus not even a part of his list? It would be akin to maintaining a Top Five records list that features a t.v. show. That seems so incredible to me that I almost wondered why the film put it in. I assume it's to show that his hindsight has sharpened some and he can absorb the blame that he used to reflect onto others, but I'm not convinced.
4. Given number three, I'm not sold on his relationship and life epiphanies, and so, reason four. Zeta-Jones' character has it right when she rolls her eyes in exasperation at yet another "what is it all about?" person who can solve such a momentous question by focusing solely on failed relationships. It's the equivalent of trying to find a cure for cancer by focusing on male enhancement formulas. Furthermore, when he does make some realizations, he makes the wrong ones! Say what you want about her shallow character or Black's elitist music geek; they both stay honest to their core personality.
5. He chooses the wrong girl. He settles. He makes the choice that this woman, for whom he clearly has major problems, is the answer to his dreams simply because he is tired of looking. That's it. You can couch it in your own terms, but for me, his revelation to his on/off girlfriend that he has decided against pursuing the record reviewing woman who recently entered his life for her and their problematic relationship is a safe, scared, and uninspired moment of clarity. Call me bitter, a romantic idiot, a dreamer, a relationship elitist, or whatever you wish, but if you are really happy with the person you are with, if you really can't wait to see them each day, if the rest of the people in the world disappear when they enter the room, why would you ever find yourself considering someone else? That's not true love, that's settling for satisfactory. He should have moved forward and tried life with the other girl instead of moving backward. Maybe he grew up some and assumed some responsibility and ownership for his life. If that's the moral of the story, forgive me for not agreeing. If you believe that growing up and maturing means settling into the slow, passive crawl to death, go right ahead. Cusack's Rob character is thus a faux-rebel; a person who outwardly wants to be different and unique and fight the system that grinds romantic souls into complacent couples, but inwardly he longs to get off the train at Cul de Sac, USA where satisfied couples gather on Saturdays with the women drinking Merlot inside and talking about their new house additions or taking care of the kids and the guys in the back yard drinking light beer and comparing barbecue grills or titanium drivers. The moral of that story? Find any way you can to stuff material items into the emptiness in your heart and soul. Can you smell the banality? Me, I'm going after The One until I find her and I won't settle for less and I'll consequently avoid ever repeating those pathetic suburban nightmares that I once endured.
Hi Fidelity settles.
Summary of High Fidelity
From the guys who brought you GROSSE POINTE BLANK comes the absolutely hilarious HIGH FIDELITY. John Cusack (BEING JOHN MALKOVICH) stars as Rob Gordon, the owner of a semi-failing record store located on one of the back streets of Chicago. He sells music the old-fashioned way -- on vinyl, with two wacky clerks, the hysterically funny rock snob Barry (Jack Black) and the more quietly opinionated underachiever Dick (Todd Luiso). But Rob's business isn't the only thing in his life that's floundering -- his needle skips the love groove when his longtime girlfriend Laura (newcomer Iben Hjejle) walks out on him. And this forces him to examine his past failed attempts at romance the only way he knows how! For a rocking fun time, give HIGH FIDELITY a spin. It's sure to make your all-time top five list for comedies -- with a bullet.Transplanted from England to the not-so-mean streets of Chicago, the screen adaptation of Nick Hornby's cult-classic novel High Fidelity emerges unscathed from its Americanization, idiosyncrasies intact, thanks to John Cusack's inimitable charm and a nimble, nifty screenplay (cowritten by Cusack). Early-thirtysomething Rob Gordon (Cusack) is a slacker who owns a vintage record shop, a massive collection of LPs, and innumerable top-five lists in his head. At the opening of the film, Rob recounts directly to the audience his all-time top-five breakups--which doesn't include his recent falling out with his girlfriend Laura (Iben Hjejle), who has just moved out of their apartment. Thunderstruck and obsessed with Laura's desertion (but loath to admit it), Rob begins a quest to confront the women who instigated the aforementioned top-five breakups to find out just what he did wrong.
Low on plot and high on self-discovery, High Fidelity takes a good 30 minutes or so to find its groove (not unlike Cusack's Grosse Pointe Blank), but once it does, it settles into it comfortably and builds a surprisingly touching momentum. Rob is basically a grown-up version of Cusack's character in Say Anything (who was told "Don't be a guy--be a man!"), and if you like Cusack's brand of smart-alecky romanticism, you'll automatically be won over (if you can handle Cusack's almost-nonstop talking to the camera). Still, it's hard not to be moved by Rob's plight. At the beginning of the film he and his coworkers at the record store (played hilariously by Jack Black and Todd Louiso) seem like overgrown boys in their secret clubhouse; by the end, they've grown up considerably, with a clear-eyed view of life. Ably directed by Stephen Frears (Dangerous Liaisons), High Fidelity features a notable supporting cast of the women in Rob's life, including the striking, Danish-born Hjejle, Lisa Bonet as a sultry singer-songwriter, and the triumphant triumvirate of Lili Taylor, Joelle Carter, and Catherine Zeta-Jones as Rob's ex-girlfriends. With brief cameos by Tim Robbins as Laura's new, New Age boyfriend and Bruce Springsteen as himself. --Mark Englehart
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