Nick & Norah's Indefinite Pronoun (Revised)

“Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist” is a romantic teen-comedy directed by Peter Sollet, based on a book of the same title by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan. It’s meant to be sweet, charming romance between two people who find each other through the eclectic melodies of the modern urban music scene, their near-identical music taste bringing them together in the chaos of high school and downtown New York. Music has served as the impetus for many relationships in this day and age, and “Nick & Norah” seeks to present a unique yet quintessential story of two people who fall into this kind of romance. However, this “Infinite” playlist comes up aggravatingly short. For all the hype the movie gave itself about sporting an indie playlist featuring names like Vampire Weekend and Band of Horses, “Nick & Norah” is not a movie about music whatsoever.
Take a movie like High Fidelity, a romantic comedy centered on music. High Fidelity used its encyclopedic knowledge of great music to explain the inexplicable complexities of life and relationships. You’d think that a movie about two people’s infinite playlist would imply that the film would focus on using good music to effectively accompany some important adolescent-romantic moments, or that they would at least talk about a song or two, of which it does neither. Other than their brief tour of Electric Lady studios and a timid Cure reference, “Nick & Norah” either leaves the music on this infinite playlist as an indefinite pronoun (Nick & Norah’s indefinite pronoun, rather) or stays so cozily in the comfort zone of mainstream music (think of two people reveling in their serendipitous mutual adoration of The Beatles) that it comes off as utterly phony.
The most irritating thing about this movie is how it scathingly mocks the lives of true music enthusiasts by starring two teenage pseudo-music enthusiasts who use the movie’s musical obsession, the fictional band “Where’s Fluffy,” as a superficial social segregator. Protagonists in the movie love “Where’s Fluffy.” Antagonists utter things along the lines of “oh yeah, I love Whose Fluffy,” to which our cool Nick and Norah sigh and roll their eyes. Throughout the movie, our heroes search for this mystery concert. After all their searching, all we see or hear of this illustrious band is a few enigmatic slow-motion clips of them waltzing onto a stage in ripped jeans and dingy converses to plug in a few guitars before N & N, satisfied entirely with their discovery of the concert, up and leave before the first song, god forbid they actually enjoy the music they blabber on about to each other. “Where’s Fluffy” is the macguffin-like, shallow embodiment of “good music taste” in the movie, that certain hip quality the writers wanted Nick & Norah to have that would identify them with the obnoxious hipster crowd. It is not a movie about two people who find each other through music, it is a movie about two teenagers who pretend to be music enthusiasts who use “good music taste” to socially profile the rest of the stereotyped cast and to serve as a hollow excuse for their affection. Sollet would have done well to watch a few music-centered romantic comedies before he got started on this bile-evoking byproduct of adolescent pretense.