Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist

Posted on October 2, 2008 at 6:04 pm

B+
Lowest Recommended Age: Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating: Rated PG-13 for mature thematic material including teen drinking, sexuality, language and crude behavior
Profanity: Very strong language for a PG-13
Alcohol/ Drugs: Teen drinking, character gets very drunk
Violence/ Scariness: Comic violence, no one badly hurt
Diversity Issues: Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters: October 3, 2008

There is no question that Nick (Michael Cera) and Norah (Kat Dennings) are destined for True Love. For one thing, they have the same taste in music. Nick is still making mixes for the girl who dumped him (Alexis Dziena as Tris, who doesn’t want Nick but REALLY doesn’t want him to want anyone else) because that is the best way for him to express how he feels. He does not know that Norah snags them because she may not know who he is, but she knows he is her musical soulmate. When Tris threw the most recent one into the trash (“Road to Closure: Volume XII”), Norah retrieved it and loved it.

And they share names with the most adorable couple in the history of movies, Nick and Nora Charles, played by William Powell and Myrna Loy in the “Thin Man” series. Powell and Loy, who appeared together more than any on-screen team in the sound era, were always magic together (I am especially partial to “I Love You Again”), but what made their “Thin Man” couple so unusual was that they were already married when they began. The original Nick and Nora made marriage look like fun; they were better evidence that there is such a thing as happily ever after than a hundred movies that end with a wedding.

This Nick and Norah have a way to go to get to happily ever after, but it is a journey we enjoy taking with them. First, the characters are played by two of the most endearing young performers in films today, Michael Cera (from “Juno” and “Superbad”) and Kat Dennings (“40 Year Old Virgin” and “The House Bunny”). Second, the script is fresh, funny, and real, and third it is superbly directed by Peter Sollett, whose Raising Victor Vargas showed great skill at telling stories about teenagers that feel true, immediate, and intimate.

It all takes place on one night in the small town that is New York City, or at least the part of New York that is cool for high school seniors, who cruise around and run into each other pretty much constantly except when they are trying to find each other. Nick, Norah, Tris and her new date, Nick’s kind-hearted gay bandmates, and Norah’s very drunk friend Caroline (Ari Graynor, whose dazzling smile almost completely de-tawdrifies her character’s situation, even when she’s barfing into a bus station toilet that was already plenty disgusting enough).

The film adroitly sidesteps the expected teen movie cliches. Nick and Norah are tentative about their feelings for one another but they each know who they are and they both have a level of confidence about interacting in the world and understanding what is important to them. I liked the way Norah talked about “tikkun olam,” the Jewish imperative to heal the world.” It is very nice to see a movie character, especially a young one, who draws something meaningful from religion and to see something Jewish in a movie that is not “oy vay,” bagels, or guilt. The movie also draws from the emerging world of cuddle puddles and technological omni-connectedness to move the story forward without being intrusive or showy or trying too hard to be hip. And it beautifully catches the way that falling in love at the same time transforms us and makes us our most authentic selves.

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Comedy Date movie Movies -- format Romance Teenagers

Life or Something Like It

Posted on December 13, 2002 at 5:17 am

It’s been months since we have had a good old-fashioned date movie and that makes this one particularly welcome.

Angelina Jolie plays Lanie, a television news reporter in Seattle who thinks her life is just about perfect. For her, that means a great apartment, great friends, a great fiance, and a shot at her dream job on the network. And perfection is what she strives for, from the tip of her cotton candy hair helmet to the calves that show the effect of thousands of hours on a stairclimber. She never questions what she wants or what she has to do to get there.

But she is sent to do a story on a homeless man who predicts the future, and he tells her what the score will be in the football game to be played later that day. He tells her that it will hail the next morning. And he tells her that she will not get the job she wants, and has only a week to live. When the first two predictions come true, she begins to think that she might just have a week to live, and that her life is not so perfect after all.

Where did Lanie get her ideas about what constiituted perfection? There is some nonsense about sibling rivalry with a sister who has a rich husband and a fancy house. What makes more sense is that Lanie gets her idea of perfection from the very place she seeks it, television. With an indestructible platinum helmet hairdo, flawless muscle tone, and a baseball player fiance, she is a cross between Marilyn Monroe and Barbara Walters. Her idol is Deborah Connors (Stockard Channing), the queen of interviewers, who always gets her subjects to cry.

The prospect of having no more time makes Lainie think about what she was postponing. The first surprise is who she asks for advice. She turns for help to a man she thought she hated, Pete (Edward Burns), her cameraman. He tells her to talk to the people she cares about most.

The script has no surprises, but Jolie and Burns have a nice rythym as they constantly ask each other to define their words. It is easy to believe that they would both be attracted to someone who doesn’t let them get away with easy charm. The biggest surprise is Jolie in a role clearly designed for someone like Meg Ryan or Sandra Bullock. She doesn’t let Lanie get too cute and shows us Lanie’s vulnerability, inescurity, and her capacity for giddy joy.

Parents should know that the movie has some strong language. An unmarried couple lives together and there are references to a drunken sexual encounter and an out of wedlock pregnancy. Getting drunk is portrayed as freeing. There is non-graphic violence. Some viewers may be upset by the seer’s prediction. And some younger viewers may be disturbed by the reference to divorced parents, even though it is amicable.

Families who see this movie should talk about how we decide what “perfection” means to each of us and whose approval matters most to us. How do we live in a way that balances planning for the future with recognizing what is important in the present. How do our family dynamics transfer over into our work relationships? Why didn’t Lanie understand how important she was to her father?

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy the black and white classic “Theodora Goes Wild.” They will also enjoy Martha Beck’s book “Following Your North Star.”

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Date movie Drama
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