Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist: Micheal Cera is the thinnest of all men

Music is insane with it's presence in our lives. It's so personal and central, yet usually a backdrop. There's something about how our brain is trained to directly associate what's happening visually with what's happening auditorily, so we find ourselves thinking of a certain stretch of road when we recall a favorite lyric. And nevermind the intense mind-fuck of rediscovering a childhood album, and witnessing the intimate memories of then and now mingling into a helix of autobiographical moments.

Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist, though set in the lives of several people who adore and revolve around music, and played amidst many band and song motifs, is not really about music in and of itself, anymore than it's about Brooklyn and Manhattan, or the ever-grossening gum that gets transferred from mouth to hipster-mouth like the stand-in for a joint at a straight-edge party. The film is, instead, about young romance, or rather, young people innocently bumbling into and past love. And it captures that pretty darn well. But in it's intent to also be about music, it seems to think that including a hundred references will suffice. When Nora (played by Kat Dennings, with whom we are all, now, infatuated) announces that she, too, lists the (fictional) band "Where's Fluffy" as her favorite, we get a moment of how central music and bands are to the early fumbling of pre-lovers. When you're excited about someone, how can you not explode your excited opinions all over them? And what are me more excited about, than music?

The only problem is, this movie didn't have enough of that. Even if music isn't the fulcrum of the pristine new connection between Nick and Nora (since organic conversation goes all over the place), there were only a few precious scenes that allowed these lovers to breathe. What I'm saying is, I could have watched an hour and a half straight of these two perfect young actors getting to know each other. Reaching sensitive feelers and learning each other's precious rhythms and energies. That's proto-love--and it's the part of my teenage years that I recall most fondly, and can't help hearken back to when I find new love. Those moments are gold, and replay endlessly in our memories. Um... just like... music? What?! Yeah. So the metaphor is as appropriate as the coupling. It's youth. It's energy. It's love. And the film could have glided perfectly on these moments (the DVD's two commentaries ask for more of such scenes, which I find telling).

The thing is, I have nothing against the other scenes. The Scooby-gang-esque chase through The City, and resulting counter-romance between Lothario and Dev, and the sagacious advice from Thom (who needs a sequel/prequel all his own) is all fun and appropriately "teen movie"-ish. The oft-mentioned Ari Graynor is great fun, too--how could you be bored with a beautiful and talented comedienne's delivery of party-drunk gone into pathetic-drunk? It's all very fun.

But my issue is not with fun. It's with magic. A film about youth needs to exude youth. "Nick and Nora" had it, but it didn't glow with it. The book has a passage about each moment being a song, and life being bigger than that. If the film could have showed me that infinite playlist of songs, I would have been teary-eyed by the end. Instead, I found myself thinking "what a great film". Though I still have a crush on Kat Dennings.

(Extra points for Mark Mothersbaugh!)