High Fidelity (2000)
Directed by Stephen Frears
After his long-time girlfriend dumps him, a thirty-year-old record store owner seeks to understand why he is unlucky in love while recounting his "top five breakups of all time".
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31 films that influenced High Fidelity
What critics say influenced High Fidelity
There's more than a hint of Woody Allen in the project, from the neuroses of the main character to the Annie Hall-type dissection of a failed romance, but without the stigma that some movie-goers attach to anything Allen does.
All I know is that Cusack’s direct address to the camera and his self-reflective narration of his failed relationships doesn’t seem nearly as effective now, at least in the first part of the film, as Woody Allen’s “Annie Hall,” which was made 23 years earlier, or Rob Reiner’s “When Harry Met Sally . .
Heureusement, plutôt que de se tourner bêtement vers l’utilisation de la fameuse voix off, les quatre scénaristes optèrent pour une solution beaucoup plus créative - et de loin plus brillante - en répétant le même stratagème qui avait fait en grande partie le charme du remarquable Annie Hall de Woody Allen.
Cameos, flashbacks, zany fantasies, scenes repeated with different outcomes: The movie is a slacker's Annie Hall (1977).
British director Stephen Frears does a good job at adapting the cult Nick Hornby novel into a dynamic, free form picture which borrows a few storytelling tricks from Woody Allen's "Annie Hall" (notably how Cusack's character talks directly to the camera) without losing its original flavor.
High Fidelity is practically an update of Annie Hall, featuring fourth-wall breaking, fantasy sequences, a protagonist who has had several relationships, and a realistic ending in which the future is still up in the air.
Even in his early roles, like a supporting part in John Hughes' Sixteen Candles and the male lead in Rob Reiner's delightful The Sure Thing , there was something idiosyncratic about John Cusack's work.
He was a geeky freshman in high school when I was a geeky freshman in high school (1984's Sixteen Candles).
The literary references are similarly savvy (The Unbearable Lightness of Being), the Chicago locations unadorned, while the art direction looks funky enough to almost pass for real life.
1990's Miami Blues was a quirky crime thriller packed with eccentric characters and rat-tat-tat dialogue, and this follow-up operates in much the same manner.
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The first is Grosse Pointe Blank, and before it gets dismissed as yet another Quentin Tarantino rip-off (as were most of the post-Pulp Fiction films of the late 90s, and rightly so), let's remember that its director, George Armitage, shot his own Tarantino-esque film before QT ever became a Hollywood player.
While it's obvious that neither element is particularly novel, the way in which director Frears ("Dangerous Liaisons," an Oscar nominee for "The Grifters") and co-screenwriters Cusack, Scott Rosenberg ("Con Air," "Beautiful Girls") and D.V. DeVincentis & Steve Pink ("Grosse Pointe Blank") interweave them into the story works rather well.
But this is hardly a surprise, coming from the director of Dangerous Liaisons and the writing-producing gang behind Grosse Pointe Blank.
In films like "Say Anything...", "The Sure Thing" and "Grosse Pointe Blank", Mr. Cusack has honed the hapless good guy character - charming in his own clueless way - to a fine point.
(I think he has a soft spot for the '80s; for more, see "Say Anything�," "Grosse Pointe Blank" and others.)
GROSSE POINTE BLANK (1997) / HIGH FIDELITY (2000).
The ensuing tussle was amusingly portrayed in Cusack's 1997 comedy "Grosse Pointe Blank," and it's even more trenchantly explored in "High Fidelity."
The always wonderful Joan Cusack ("Cradle Will Rock," "Working Girl") is a bit shortchanged as far as screen time and material is concerned, while actresses such as Catherine Zeta-Jones ("Entrapment," "The Mask of Zorro"), Lili Taylor ("The Haunting," "The Impostors") and Lisa Bonet ("Angel Heart," TV's "The Cosby Show") are good in their limited roles as various women who torment Bob in one way or another during the film.
The movie is more fun, but it isnt interesting or new, and it certainly isnt His Girl Friday.
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Especially when The Grifters, another adaptation of a cult novel featuring John Cusack, looked and felt like a humorless version of Warren Beatty's Dick Tracy.
In another scene, Rob uses a discussion of the movie Evil Dead II (1987) in order to bring to light something his girlfriend has told him.