FIFTEEN years after this city was reborn, it’s about time we had a “Dazed and Con fused” or “Sixteen Candles” or “Superbad” set in Man hattan. “Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist” is in the special ed class compared to those valedictorians, but it has a dogged all-night charm and a sense of who its audience is.
As a comedy, the movie is so thin that its entire complement of funny lines pretty much fits on the poster. (“I refuse to be the goody bag at your pity party” channels the spirit of “Juno” – as does the font on the poster and the male lead.)
The plot isn’t much, either. Nick (Michael Cera of “Superbad”) is in a band. He drives a yellow Yugo from his New Jersey home into the city while mooning over the popular preppy girl, Tris (Alexis Dziena), who dumped him.
After about four flavors of coincidence, he and the queen bee’s less popular private-school classmate Norah spend a long Friday night talking, arguing, flirting and driving around downtown Manhattan while following the trail of their favorite underground band.
Cera, whose fiercely withdrawn presence and stumbling delivery make him something like the Bob Newhart of his generation, remains easy to like, though. And he plays well off his co-star. Norah is Kat Dennings, a striking actress who nevertheless looks approachable enough that she can successfully play the nonglamorous girl. She is engaging, smart and completely natural, an instant star in whom the girls in the audience will be able to picture themselves.
The boys will want to send her a mix tape, a habit of Nick’s that hasn’t won him back Tris but started to intrigue Norah before she ever met him. When Norah shows interest in Nick, Tris suddenly starts flinging herself at him, too, which makes the film, despite its aura of quirk, more or less a rewrite of the standard Jane Austen/chick lit plot: Which one of the two moneyed
honeys will our poor hero wind up with?
The kids are all a bit too sure of themselves, but the target audience won’t mind. High school is a frantic struggle to extricate yourself from Planet Childhood, trying to figure out sex while pretending you already know everything about it, and a couple of scenes get that point across painfully well, especially one in which Tris tries to lure Nick back with an erotic dance.
What makes the film more than watchable? A great soundtrack and identifiable characters can take you a long way, even when not a lot is happening. “American Graffiti” didn’t have much of a script, either.
NICK & NORAH’S INFINITE PLAYLIST
Kat-powered.
Running time: 90 minutes. Rated PG-13 (profanity, teen drinking, sexuality, crude behavior). At the Lincoln Square, the Orpheum, the 64th and Second, others.