Issue date: 10/3/08 Section: Features

Media Credit: Courtesy of Sony Pictures [Click to enlarge]

Based on a relatively popular novel by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan, "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist" follows a high school boy (Michael Cera) plagued by feelings left over from his failed relationship and a budding one-night rendezvous with the eccentric daughter (Kat Dennings) of a big time music producer.

The movie starts off interesting enough with numerous comical one-liners Cera fans have become accustomed to from movies such as "Superbad" and "Juno." However I was unimpressed by Cera and Dennings performances. Call me crazy but I don't want to watch Cera play the monotone and slightly sarcastic teenage boy and Dennings play the over-privileged and misunderstood high school girl one more time. The plot is thin and you can discover the outcome in the first 30 minutes of the film. Granted, there are moments when the writers seem to have remembered what comical is, but you begin to find even this irrelevant as the movie goes on and on, accomplishing nothing. If you saw the preview, you can pretty much say you saw the movie - there's not much else there.

Granted, the movie, which is following two teens on a quest to find the location of their favorite band's secret performance, has a unique playlist filled with indie bands. The soundtrack is probably one of the best things about the movie and has actually been in high demand even weeks before the movie premiered.

Bands like "The Submarines" and "We Are Scientists" are sprinkled through Nick and Norah's adventure and provide an upbeat feel to a movie that should have ended about 45 minutes before it really did. As a viewer you could pretty much figure out the ultimate end to this movie. Boy gets girl. Boy and girl kiss. Boy and girl get what they were both searching for. And while there were a few unique moments that aren't fabulously played out by the movie industry yet, like the predominately gay band Cera's character Nick is a part of, most of the situations are as played out as the actors' careers. There was no exciting plot, nothing to draw you in and the times the audience actually found humor in the movie were strung together by boring unimportant plot details that only left me bored and wishing I'd stayed home and read the book instead.

Amanda Pollard can be reached at apollard@statehornet.com

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