Review of Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist (2008) by Chads. — 03 Oct 2008

The Feelies. The Feelies are from Hoboken, from Nick's neck of the woods. If Big Dipper merits a place on his wall-of-fame, so should the Glenn Mercer-led band who were like The Beatles of New Jersey during the mid-to-late eighties.

But Nick is a New Yorker now(The Magnetic Fields are from N.Y.C.), an incoming student the Berklee School of Music(Big Dipper is from Boston), so this Garden State defector just isn't in a New Jersey-state-of-mind anymore.

So you want to know what Nick is all about? Just look at his room, a veritable shrine to a kind of music, an ethos that rebelled against corporate rock which went through several name changes over the years, starting with punk(college music, post-modern, and alternative were all applicable at one time or another) and ending up as indie-rock, for the time being.

For lack of a better word, Nick is a hipster. He's a Generation Y William Miller(the Cameron Crowe-alter ego from "Almost Famous"); he missed both Kennedy the president and Kennedy the MTV vee-jay.

But the bassist from "that gay band" has an old soul. A poster of The Buzzcocks hangs proudly in his room. The Manchester punk rockers aren't vintage to the extent of another former-Hoboken resident, Frank Sinatra, but Pete Shelley and his mates started recording thirty-three years ago.

"Ever Fallen in Love(With Someone You Shouldn't've)" is the new "Strangers in the Night". Anyway, the success of "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist" hinges on Nick's indie cred.

Luckily, he met Norah(Kat Dennings), his musical soulmate, in the nick of time; fifteen more minutes with Tris(Alexis Dziena) would've resulted in him losing all his indie cred. Tris is the sort of girl who secretly loves Maroon 5, but pretends to be into The Arcade Fire, just because of the Montreal band's cool cachet.

In one scene, Norah's sturdy indie cred goes toe-to-toe with Tris' own shaky indie cred, when Nick's ex forgets the "Where's" in "Where's Fluffy?", a band so elitist, they make themselves inaccesible to their own fans.

The film frustrates, like all rom-coms, in which the audience is way ahead of the protagonist, who's painfully slow to recognize which way true love lies. But then it finally happens. To paraphrase Bono's intro to U2's cover of The Beatles' "Helter Skelter" from "Rattle and Hum", "This is a song Tris stole from Hot Chocolate, well, Nick is stealing it back," and gives it to Norah; his electric lady, his sexy thing.

"Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist" is about being young and alive on a Friday night. It's also about being in love with music.