"Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist"

Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist ****

Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist offers a near-perfect example of cinema’s capacity for allowing us to experience moments of genuine sublimity. It’s a top-drawer movie, to be sure, but nothing compares to the pleasurable feelings that the film leaves in its wake. I’m seriously thinking of seeing Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist again at the theater—if only to reprise the experience of the film’s undeniable afterglow.
Directed by Peter Sollett, Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist is based upon the young-adult novel of the same name by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan. To call it a feel-good movie would be an understatement. The film definitely succeeds in engendering good feelings, but it does so by earning our admiration, by winning our hearts as well as our minds.
Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist stars Michael Cera as Nick, a kindhearted late-teen who was recently ditched by Tris (Alexis Dziena), the great love of his young life. She’s also a superficial cur, but Nick’s far too good-natured to see through his erstwhile girlfriend’s façade. While Tris has a new boyfriend in the form of blank-minded Gary (Zachary Booth), she’s not above tempting Nick’s romantic interest—if only to sate her boundless ego.
In many ways, Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist is the teenaged version of Martin Scorsese’s After Hours, although Sollett’s film pointedly replaces Scorsese’s madcap angst with lethal doses of heartfelt romance.
In Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, our hero whiles away the night in the company of Norah (Kat Dennings), who has already become smitten with Nick by virtue of the mix CDs that he makes in his various attempts to woo back Tris. Norah loves his sweet vulnerability—especially in contrast with the slick manipulations of her present boyfriend Tal (Jay Baruchel), who sees his relationship with Norah as a conduit to her record-mogul father.
Nick and Norah spend most of their long night’s journey into day traipsing throughout Manhattan in search of Caroline (Ari Graynor), Norah’s wayward, drunken friend. They also find themselves questing to be in the audience of Where’s Fluffy, an underground band that has left clues all over town for their eager fans.
But the real story, of course, is Nick and Norah themselves. As straight-edged teens lost in a world of excess and unchecked desire, Nick and Norah seek each other out on their own terms. It’s a love story for our convoluted, twenty-first-century times.