Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist
Director: Peter Sollett
Stars: Michael Cera, Kat Dennings, Alexis Dziena
Classification: PG
Rating: ***1/2

While older critics and viewers won’t be able to resist comparing the film to American Graffiti, younger audiences at Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist might chafe at their presumption.

The filmmakers and studio are really hoping young audiences are willing to embrace the movie as their own and see it. The bad news is that, should Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist take off with the college-and-under set, chances are they’ll probably be downloading it illegally.

Michael Cera is the Nick of the title, a woeful recent dumpee still hung up on his breakup with Tris (Alexis Dziena), a girl both clearly out of his league and eminently worth his friends’ scorn.

The only straight member of a queercore band, he captures the attention of Norah (Kat Dennings), a schoolmate of Tris’, after a gig, when she chooses him randomly to pretend to be her boyfriend to spite Tris. She’s forced to keep up the fiction when Tris suddenly comes over all possessive with her discarded beau, and the three of them head out, friends in tow, on a rambling night in Manhattan in search of a super-secret surprise gig by their fave band.

Steeped with references to indie bands and cameos by Saturday Night Live cast members, the film gets the tone of urban culture and fledgling hipsters mostly right, thanks to the performances director Peter Sollett gets from Cera and Dennings and the rest of the youthful cast.

Everyone sounds comfortable with the wry, sarcastic but wholly defensive rhetoric wielded by young people, though Ari Graynor’s performance as Caroline — Norah’s helplessly drunk and guileless best friend — threatens to steal most of her scenes.

Like any romance, the film is a plea for true love and the triumph of innocence over cynicism, even as the camera coyly wanders away from showing the young lovers consummating their love with a finger-bang on a couch in a famous New York recording studio. 

That the film can embrace queercore and finger-bangs and still look like one of the more virtuous depictions of teen life out there says a lot about kids today.