High Fidelity

Aah the pleasures of inflight entertainment on an international flight!!! There are so many movies that don’t see the light of day back home.  And I wonder why?  During the flight to down under, I happened to see 2 such movies.  High Fidelity is a funny RomCom with some serious acting talent on display.

Rob Gordon (John Cusack) is a loser of sorts.  He has the opportunity to make it big but is too darn lazy to move his ass in a positive direction.  He drops out of college and keeps doing odd jobs till he finally lands up doing something that he really wants to but doesn’t pay him enough to keep up with the rent and expenses.  He owns a music store along with his friends Dick (Todd Louiso) and Barry (Jack Black).  Dick is a diminutive, reserved kind of a person who barely speaks but has a supreme command over music.  Barry on the other hand is a riot.  He is reckless and has a huge liking for rock / cult music which is different and not run of the mill.  So much so that he would refuse to sell stuff to people who he believes don’t have the right taste in music.  The trio struggles through life but have that one thing that binds them together – music.

However, Rob’s life is turned a bit topsy turvy when his girlfriend of two years, Laura (Iben Hjejle) decides to dump him.  A distraught Rob tries his best to stop her but she is not willing to go through this anymore.  Rob is even more crushed when he realizes that she has temporarily moved in with the guy next door, Ian ‘Ray’ Raymond (Tim Robbins), a karate expert and a weirdo.  Unable to figure out the reason for this sudden turn of events, he tries to wind the clock on all his previous relationships which have failed and boils down to his top 5 break ups starting from a passing high school romance that lasted for a few hours but left him completely shattered.

High Fidelity is a dark RomCom – if there is room for any such classification.  Director Stephen Frears has been around for over 40 years now (30 at the time of making HF).  He spent a better part of the first half of his career on Television – primarily with short films and TV movies.  But he kind of burst into the silver screen with the 1988 block buster – Dangerous Liaisons. His last known work was the Oscar nominated “The Queen”.  One cannot help but notice that his movies are studded with supremely strong actors.  A trait that he uses in HF as well – very successfully.  John Cusack’s portrayal of the loser character of Rob Gordon is simply superb.  He is not just ably but wonderfully supported by one of the best comic actors of our time – Jack Black.  Together they completely light up the screen on what could be otherwise considered as a not so strong script or story line.  The supporting cast is also superb – so is it kudos to direction or just that Mr. Frears picks his actors very carefully? Doesn’t really matter I say.  The output is a very strong movie which could probably have been pushed to the next level with a stronger script.  7 on 10 from my side for HF.  Watch it if you are a lover of Dark Comedy.