Modern Life is Rubbish

“Modern Life is Rubbish,” named for the song by Blur, is a slight but sweet update to the classic boy meets girl story. What it lacks in originality it almost makes up for with its exceptionally appealing actors and a soundtrack featuring Radiohead, Stereophonics, the 1975, The Vaccines, Warpaint, The Libertines, and Mt Wolf, all very suitable for a story about a couple brought together by music. It’s like a lower grade “High Fidelity” with a touch of “When Harry Met Sally.”

Liam (Josh Whitehouse, who does play music in real life) meets Natalie (Freya Mavor) in a record store, where he tries to talk her out of buying Blur’s “Best of” album: “It’s cheating. It’s like a shortcut to enlightenment.” “Do you work here?” she asks, before telling him that she already has all the other albums he is urging on her and is buying this one because it is the only way to get the special live acoustic version of “On Your Own.” In other words, she is his dream girl. But she leaves the store without his getting her number.

But we know there is a romantic falling-in-love montage ahead with an impeccably curated musical score as they fall in indie music love and are just plain heart-meltingly adorable. Until life intervenes, Liam’s promises that he will be a big rock star seem increasingly implausible, and someone, probably the member of the couple who is not in the band, has to get a regular old job to pay the rent. In other words, it is time to grow up.

But Liam is, as we saw in the record store, a purist, and cannot sully himself by working for The Man or buying any of The Man’s enlightenment-preventing products, like, for example, an iPod. Music should be on albums you can hold in your hand, with artistic statements in their cover designs and meaningful liner notes. Natalie, who once dreamed of creating album covers (Michael Beck’s job in “Xanadu,” as I recall), goes to work for The Man-iest of The Man jobs — advertising. Each begins to resent the other. They break up and have to go through all the stuff they have accumulated together, each one bringing back memories of better times.

Director Daniel Jerome Gill relies too much on the music to do the work, and the secondary characters are not as colorful as he hopes they are. But Whitehouse and Mavor have great chemistry and give their thinly written characters charm and energy, which keeps us on their side through very predictable ups and downs.

Parents should know that this film includes some strong language and explicit sexual situations (no nudity).

Family discussion: Why was Liam so opposed to new technology? What does it mean to sell out?

If you like this, try: “High Fidelity” and “Bandslam”