High Fidelity (2000)

High Fidelity has the look of an 8-track and the mind of an album cover. Meaning, it's dated and absolutely memorable, all at the exact same time. I saw John Cusack channeling Woody Allen the entire time, complete with talking straight to the audience. Like Allen's characters, he is pseudo-intellectual, has trouble with staying with women, and is insufferably selfish. But nonetheless, Cusack brings him to life, in an interesting, updated way. The music is great, but I felt like it didn't attribute to how good the film was. The film would've been just as good with no music at all. What strays me from loving this film is that any scene, with the girlfriend Laura, is just boring. She's that same cookie-cutter, innocent little heart-string puller that you see in EVERY romantic comedy. The final 30 minutes focus on her, and I kind of tuned out the movie at that point. Otherwise, the movie succeeded very well as a standard film narrative. If someone came up with this script in one of my film classes, the professors would eat it up.