John Cusack is a talented actor that, near as I can make out, was something of a heartthrob for a period there. It’s not too hard to see why. He did make a string of romantic comedies that are generally well-received while also being different enough to stand out a bit. But Say Anything‘s lead character could be arguably something of a stalker, and Grosse Point Blank‘s protagonist is a hitman having a midlife crisis. Neither are exactly the sort of men that women might want to really be with in real life. But then there’s High Fidelity, and at least that one has Cusack playing a record store owner who mostly just loves good music. That’s fairly normal.
High Fidelity‘s Rob may be the worst of the three…
Rob, see, does own a record store and is a lot more normal than the others, but he’s also reeling from the sudden break-up of longtime girlfriend Laura (Iben Hjejle). Rob has a tendency to rank things in top five lists, and though he states Laura will not make his top five break-ups, he does go into a bit of a crisis as he can’t quite see why she left him. Why does this always happen to him, he wonders, reflecting on past break-ups that he feels are not his fault for one reason or another…even if it is very clear at least one of them is very much his fault. When he isn’t moping over Laura and how she left him for some loser from the upstairs apartment (a ponytailed Tim Robbins), he’s hanging out in his record store that doesn’t seem to actually sell many records with his two employees Dick (Todd Louiso) and Barry (a scene-stealing Jack Black). Meanwhile, Rob just seems to be trying to get Laura back because he didn’t know how much he valued her until she left.
But what does Rob really want out of life? He knows quite a bit about music, and he keeps making these top five lists for one reason or another. He has had a couple of memorable girlfriends in the past, and the thing that stands out the most is he is a directionless, self-centered mopey mess of a man. If anything, Laura’s leaving him leads him down an important path of self-discovery, something that he needs both to be better for himself and any potential romantic partner he may some day have. Plus, maybe then he’ll be nicer to people.
That’s why I say he may be the worst of the three Cusack-protagonists. Setting aside some things that happened when Laura was pregnant and Rob didn’t know it (how that incident was not a deal-breaker for Laura much sooner I will never know, but it gave John’s sister Joan a chance to show a lot of comedic outrage, and that is never a bad thing), Rob just isn’t a very good guy. That’s more or less the point of the movie: Rob is a bad guy and he needs to change or he will forever be a lonely guy. When Rob recounts his first break-up with a girl in the seventh grade, he recounts it as something she initiated when even in the flashback it is obvious that was not the case. When he finally does realize that, it’s an important step. Rob can become a better man as a result.
For me, though, I ask myself if it is too late by then. The movie is charming and fun in many ways, showing some creative storytelling techniques as it flashes back and forth to Rob’s past, present, and even the occasional fantasy realm where Bruce Springsteen, appearing as himself, can tell Rob that some plan Rob has put together is the right way to go. Rob’s not a man with many redeeming factors when we first meet him, and while he does get to be better, I am not sure how well the movie sells that betterment, particularly as it arguably rewards him in the end. Then again, Rob finally had a direction in his life by then, so maybe it wasn’t all bad. As much as I enjoyed this movie, and I really did enjoy this movie, I wasn’t sure it devoted enough time to Rob’s reform after showing what kind of man he was. He wasn’t really an evil man or anything. He was just a self-centered and directionless one. And that, well, may be all a story like this one needs in the end.
That said, it is somewhat interesting to note Lisa Bonet is in this film is an up-and-coming musician for Rob to flirt with a bit, but then Bonet’s daughter Zoe Kravitz played a gender-flipped version of Rob in a Hulu TV version of this story for a single season. But that’s just some minor trivia I noted when I saw Bonet and had a vague recollection her daughter did such a show.
Grade: B+
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