Barnes & Noble

Inspired casting and a clever narrative strategy make Stephen Frears's adaptation of Nick Hornby's wry cult novel an unexpected triumph that never loses the voice of the book's protagonist -- or the hilarious musical obsessions that make this one of the best music movies this side of Spinal Tap. With his ordinary-guy appeal, John Cusack is a natural as Hornby's underachieving hero, Rob -- a 30-something owner of a failing record store whose lawyer girlfriend has just left him when the story opens. Rob spends the rest of the movie on a funny and poignant quest to understand why his life -- particularly his love life -- has not turned out like a pop song. Cusack, who cowrote the film, changes the novel's London setting to his native Chicago, and the transition works surprisingly well. Frears preserves the charm of the book's first-person narrative by having Cusack talk directly to the camera; it's a device that could have been cloying, but the actor pulls it off with flying colors. Everyone in the cast is terrific, but Rob's dysfunctional record shop assistants -- Todd Louiso as the hopelessly geeky Dick and the unstoppable Jack Black as the aggressively obnoxious Barry -- are the real show stealers. The scenes where they sit around compiling endless "Top Ten" lists of everything from songs to dream jobs are comic perfection. As for the hip soundtrack that Cusack helped assemble -- well, it's everything even the most die-hard fans of the book could have hoped for. Kryssa Schemmerling

All Movie Guide

A man discovers that there's more to love than a good mixed tape in this dramatic comedy about music and relationships. Rob (John Cusack), an obsessive record collector in his mid-thirties, is struggling to reconcile his adolescent enthusiasm for pop music with adult responsibilities and a more mature outlook. He runs a record shop with his friends Barry (Jack Black) and Dick (Todd Louiso), who are known to drive away customers whose taste in music doesn't match their exacting standards -- which may have something to do with why the shop is losing money. But Rob's biggest problem is his failing relationship with Laura (Iben Hjejle), a lawyer who needs more out of the relationship than Rob is capable of giving. To Rob's horror, Laura starts dating Ian (Tim Robbins), his upstairs neighbor, known throughout the building for his long and noisy sex sessions. Rob, on the other hand, finds himself catching the attention of singer/songwriter Marie DeSalle (Lisa Bonet), as he tries to deal with his breakup by tracking down his previous ex-girlfriends and taking a fresh look at what he's been doing wrong. Based on the acclaimed novel by Nick Hornby, High Fidelity also features Catherine Zeta-Jones, Lili Taylor, and Joelle Carter as three of Rob's ex-lovers, and Sara Gilbert as Dick's new girlfriend, who gets a crash course in U.K. punk bands that influenced Green Day. Mark Deming

Product Details

• UPC: 786936795684
• Source: TOUCHSTONE / DISNEY
• Region Code: 1
• Time: 1:54:00
• Sales Rank: 8,410

This DVD is also available as part of a box set:

• Grosse Pointe Blank/High Fidelity

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