Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist: the Official Scape Review
Some people are a disease. Your life is better off without them and moving on is the only way to go. Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist has this point to make, a fairy tale story to tell, and a great performance or two; but other than that it really is has very little to offer in terms of originality or justification of spending the cost of your movie ticket on it. You have to be in the mood for a movie like this, and that is perfectly fine. It is a journey so sweet that you’re going to be grasping for water; but if your taste buds can take it, you’ll like it ok.
If I have to say one thing about the movie that is positive (which I don’t, but hey, here goes), it’s that it is really familiar. You think about your life during this movie, times you’ve had that mirror nights like the one that Nick and Norah share, and people that you’ve let go and have had something with that is now complete history. But is this familiar because this movie paints it realistically or just because all the factors encased in this film are something we all, at one point, encounter?
Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist starts off well enough: Nick is leaving his now ex-girlfriend Tris a long voicemail that introduces what the character is feeling to the audience. It is cute, well-executed, and a good opener. We then cut to Norah’s school where we see Tris treating Norah like shit and throwing away one of the mix CD’s that Nick has made her. Norah grabs the mix out of the garbage because “he makes the best mixes”, and we immediately get taken out of any kind of context that could be painted as an honest movie. It is now a romantic comedy first and foremost. She is already in love with the concept of Nick. We know where this is going.
Nick is an “emo punk indie boy”, as described by Norah at some point in the film, who is in a band with two gay guys who love the minor stardom that comes in being in a well-liked local band. The gears really start turning when we go to a show of theirs. Norah and Tris both show up. The scene is set.
Norah has a rivalry with Nick’s ex-girfriend (that he is so desperately, and familiarly, hung up on) Tris. Tris is a bitch. Tris is the girl you love to hate, and definitely do nothing but hate throughout the entire film. I, at one point, had to fight the urge to flip off the screen when she was talking. Very well cast role. Tris criticizes Norah on a minutely basis, and we get their rivalry almost immediately. It is pretty much thrown in our face.
Minor spoiler alert here, but Nick and Norah’s journey starts off with Norah lying to Tris and saying that she has a boyfriend, then walking over to Nick and asking him to pretend they are dating without knowing that he is “Tris’ Nick”. She kisses him at this point, and we might as well have seen fairy dust sprinkling out from above their heads. This is where the film made me resign to the idea that this is not the honest, realistic, and “Before Sunshine”esque movie that I had been promised. It is magical. It is something outside foreseeable reality that is made to make you feel good, nostalgic, lonely, enchanted, and optimistic all at once. It is a romantic comedy.
At this point, we meet (please excuse the pun, but really, this movie is like a fairy tale) the three fairies: Nick’s two band mates, and a cute boy that they meet after the show who knows where to find the rare show being played later that night by a band that seems to be everyone’s musical messiah. Everyone is trying to get to this concert for the rest of film. These three guys do everything from set up Nick with Norah, to fix his car, to try and take Norah’s drunk best friend home, to even dress Norah up in more acceptable clothing to make her more attractive to Nick. They are very silly, over the top, and spend the entire film trying to get the two together. They are bickering, bumbling, seemingly incompetent, but pull everything they want to pull off in the end, and even save the day at some point. Perfect three fairies.
These characters are another reason the film really takes you out of reality and punches you in the face with “this. is. a. romantic. comedy”. They are the comic relief beyond Nick and Norah’s endearingly awkward exchanges in the first half of the film. They work with the film, but help paint that this is not a movie based in reality. This is fine, and they are very likable characters, but a person definitely needs to be in the mood for the syrupy sweetness that these three guys add to the film. 
Possibly the highlight of the film, and by far carrying the best performance, was the character of Caroline – played masterfully by Ari Graynor. She plays Norah’s drunk best friend. She carries the biggest gross-out scene in the film and makes it work in a way that fit the tonality of the rest of the characters perfectly. She manages to stay drunk throughout the entire film and not become the least bit annoying. We all know a girl like Caroline, and we have all encountered a girl like Caroline. Be it your girlfriend, love interest, sister, best friend, or just someone who has bumped into you and made you smile, we all know a girl who is so drunk that she makes you laugh and worried at the same time. The thought “someone take care of her, please” goes through your head when you meet a girl like this and that particular impulse is exactly what makes Graynor’s characterization of this archtypical staple of your young-adult life so accessibly sympathetic.
The score is a modern indie rock potpurri of all the most heart-tugging B-sides from bands that, if you like indie rock, you pretty much cannot escape. The choices of music don’t guide you through the film, but push you to emotional places that make you fully aware that you are listening to a song that is supposed to bring out a certain feeling in you. The music is too much some of the time, but fitting for some of the film. The pleasant tones of a lot of the newest bands underscore the youth of this story and bring it home that this is a romantic comedy that could have been brought out from the mind of a teenager in a band living in New York as we speak.
Overall, the movie goes places you can completely expect and predict. Like I said before, it really brings the message of moving on and living your life to the table, very much to the story’s credit. Beyond this, though, the movie takes you through a journey of all the most ideal scenarios with which you could meet someone. If you could go into a young emo teenager’s mind and tear out what they have always wanted, then you would find this story. It pulls out the formula of a romantic comedy and applies it to a newer generation in a way that feels very forced in using Juno-esque contrived slang and “told youth” (youth that is told to you and written into the dialogue to really spell it out for you, instead of being implied by the actions and performances of the characters).
The movie really does pull at your heart strings, though, and it goes exactly where you want it to just like any other romantic comedy out there. This is a great date movie, and something that will definitely make you talk after you see it. Don’t expect any uncharted waters, anything unpredictable, anything that makes you think, or anything that will give you a new perspective on romantic comedies. Expect a hyper-sweet piece of fluff with a hint of personality, a bit of magic, and one solid performance.
