Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist - Released 30/01/2009
Right. I know that this film came out absolutely AGES ago, but I only saw it yesterday. Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist came out while I was in the middle of a poverty-stricken phase of life that prevented my visiting the cinema (with the excpetion of Twilight… I still managed to see that one twice) and then it seems to have just been one of those films that I completely forgot about until I spotted it in my boyfriend’s DVD collection while moping around on his sofa with a cold yesterday afternoon and demanded to watch hoping it would impress me into feeling better. And did it? Meh.
I’ve mentioned before that I’m not a huge fan of Michael Cera. Juno seems to have ruined that poor boy forever by condemning him to play the same role over and over, and unfortunately his portrayal of Nick in Nick and Norah is exactly the same as his portrayal of Paulie Bleeker in Juno and Evan in Superbad. And, although I’m sure Cera plays the role of the awkward, probably nerdier than he looks teenager who may or may not be a virgin impeccably, there are only so many times you can watch the same person play the same role in different films. And it isn’t only Michael Cera’s repetitive protagonist that bothers me. I didn’t really enjoy Kat Dennings’ Norah either. No disrespect to her, but, as with Cera, her character as the borderline smart-alec, slightly misfit girl struggling to grow into being an actual woman as well as cope with life in general is one that I’ve seen repeated across film after film after film and nobody ever does anything even slightly different with it so frankly, it’s become a bit boring. But I did like the new twist of the straight boy existing in a friendship group composed entirely of homosexuals. Those gay boys made me chuckle from my sickbed. And Norah’s drunk friend Caroline had her moments as well.
The plot of the film didn’t leave me reeling from the originality either. It all seemed very, well, “a day in the life of” and aside from the humour punctuating the hum-drum here and there, didn’t have much going for it. The whole thing was entirely predictable and, at the end of the day, was just another teenage rom-com to add to the pile.
Would I watch this film again? Probably not. I don’t think it was important that I saw it at all in the first place and it won’t be one that lingers in the memory long after I’ve finished writing. But it did pass an hour and a half or so of time and bring a vague smile to my face (and remind me that I’ve always wished I had a gay best friend so I could be like Will and Grace), so I suppose it earns kudos for that.
Not a lot of kudos, mind… it did have Michael Cera in it.
