Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist

Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist

I've talked before about the subgenre of mid-2000's-quirky-indie-comedies (Napoleon Dynamite, Juno, (500) Days of Summer, 50/50, Whip It, etc), a popular trend that still occasionally gets new entries (Lady Bird, Ingrid Goes West, Colossal, etc.), and has had plenty of success cranking out very good movies. But, like any genre (particularly trendy subgenres), there are imposters; movies that are jumping on a fad just to make a quick buck. Mid-2000's-quirky-indie-comedies have such a distinct style that they're easy to recreate without actually having any substance, and Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist is certainly guilty of this crime.

Spoilers.

The story centers around Michael Cera (owning his newfound title as "America's lovable awkward guy," having just done both Juno and Superbad the year before) as Nick, a bitter teen who's just been dumped. He meet-cutes Norah (Kat Dennings) when she needs someone to pretend to be her boyfriend for a second and chooses him. They then spend a wacky night together looking for her drunk friend Caroline (Ari Graynor, who later played Juliette Danielle in The Disaster Artist), who's on a kooky adventure of her own.

The main problem I have with this movie is its disingenuousness. They hit the emotional beats that they know a movie is supposed to hit, but its clear that they never truly feel it. Nick is supposed to be heartbroken, so we see him make a long voicemail to ex-girlfriend, then proceed to be mildly grumpy for the rest of the movie. That's a pretty weak representation of heartbreak, even if it's just a comedy. Comedies like Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Shaun of the Dead, and High Fidelity all feature protagonists who are fueled by a breakup and do a great job of showing how they're affected by it throughout the film (Jason Segel is mopey and depressed, Shaun is determined to take charge of his life in order to win Liz back, and John Cusack is righteously bitter and angry). In Nick & Norah it's lazy, like something they just wanted to get out of the way so they could move on to quirky antics.

Nick's friends try to cheer him up, but they don't feel like real people either. They're all members of the same queercore band (Nick being the only straight guy) and they're pretty stereotypical gay best friend characters. There's a brilliant Patton Oswalt bit on why the gay best friend is an ill-informed cliche: gay people are still just people, they're not all magical pillars of wisdom that automatically know the cure to post-breakup depression simply because they're exempt from heterosexual relationships. Here, Nick's gay friends are just there to be his goofy gay friends. I don't think I'd go as far as to say it's homophobic, but it's certainly a lazy placeholder for actual personalities. Same goes for Caroline, who is literally just a drunk girl, as opposed to an actual character.

This is a comedy, so there are some goofy comedy set pieces, mostly involving the drunken Caroline, and they're all easy and sometimes unpleasant. Examples of "easy" include her bumping into silly homeless characters (featuring a bizarre cameo by Andy Samberg) and accidentally crashing some kind of Christmas production in a gay club and becoming part of the show. Anyone could write these scenes, it took absolutely no effort on the screenwriter's part. The main "unpleasant" example is a scene where she drops her gum in a vomit-filled toilet, then gets it back out and continues to chew it, which seems like something that belongs in a gross-out Farrelly Brothers movie, not a quirky indie comedy (so now they're not even getting their tropes right). This scene also makes no sense because not even a blackout-drunk person would think to do something this disgusting and Caroline hasn't been established as a disgusting character. None of these scenes are funny for anyone over thirteen years old.

The film centers around the romance between Nick and Norah- oh, except it doesn't. Nick's ex is friends with Norah, and it's established that while Norah has never met Nick she has a big crush on him because of his mixtapes that he made for his ex. So, when she randomly decides to have Nick pretend to be her boyfriend to avoid her ex, she finds out that he's the mixtape guy, and that lets the screenwriter skim past them actually having any kind of chemistry or emotional connection. The only romantic moment the two characters share is at the end of the movie when they somewhat randomly decide to make out in Electric Ladyland Studios, which Norah's father owns. Neither of the characters are likable or interesting on their own, but they're somehow even more boring together. Norah and Nick mainly just seem to piss each other off, but Nick's friends decide they're perfect for each other and give Norah a makeover, because that's what movies do. Most of the movie isn't even spent on Nick and Norah, it's mainly side-gags and near-constant digressions. Even though the movie is supposed to be about these strangers falling in love over one crazy night because of a playlist, we get a handful of songs from the actual playlist and literally one conversation about it. Considering the three things in the title are Nick, Norah, and this playlist that is somehow infinite, it's safe to say these should be the driving elements of the movie. Instead the movie isn't driven by anything at all, things just sort of happen because things have to happen in a movie.

As the title I gave them suggests, mid-2000's-indie-comedies were the popular thing in the mid-2000's, and when its successful formula became obvious to other filmmakers, the copycats all came sprinting. Nick & Norah is a definite copycat, having no emotional, comedic, or cinematic substance, and instead opts for lazy, familiar indie-comedy beats that allowed it to pass the technically-a-movie test. I have no idea what the book it's based on is like, but this movie is not a good pitch for it.

I don't recommend this movie. I have no nostalgic tie to it so I only see it as a shameless cash grab with no laughs or genuine emotion to offer. If you want to watch a mid-2000s-indie-comedy, there's plenty of other options that are much more satisfying. Don't waste your time.