Director Stephen Frears
Script D.V. DeVincentis, Steve Pink, John Cusack, Scott Rosenberg.
Based on the novel by Nick Hornby
Stars John Cusack, Iben Hjejle, Jack Black, Todd Louiso, Joan Cusack, Lisa Bonet, Catherine Zeta-Jones
Certificate 15
Running time 113 mins
Made US, 2000

BY doing everything that shouldn't work, director Stephen Frears and the writing crew, which includes co-producer and star, John Cusack, have made a movie about male inadequacy that trades obsessional interests with Kevin Smith's goose-bumped, hopeless-guy-in-love romantic no-go, Chasing Amy.

They have adapted Nick Hornby's novel and transported it from North London to Chicago, at which point a sad set of English literary critics burn their star-spangled T-shirts on a barbecue in Islington, quaffing Chilean Chardonnay and insisting that Guy Ritchie's follow up to Lock Stock And Two Smoking Barrels should be the latest Brett Easton Ellis, shot in Notting Hill.

In fact, the move is harmonious. Chicago is home to Cusack and you feel him feeling it. The last person you want wandering in off the streets in Hugh Grant, although the unmade presence of Colin Firth, anti-hero of Hornby's debut, Fever Pitch, would not have gone amiss.

The other don't-go-there trick of the trade is the dreaded talking-to-camera pose, as if this is theatre and the audience breathes the same air. Cusack pulls it off by using the screen as a whine dump, neither patronising nor nudge-nudge. The story is being narrated on voice-over anyway. His asides personalise it even more, so that sympathy for Rob, the Cusack character, is complete.

He owns a vinyl collectors record store in a beat up part of town. Aficionados and pop music nerdophiles gravitate there, including his part time staff, Dick (Todd Louiso) and Barry (Jack Black), who drive him nuts most of the time. Barry won't consider serving a customer if he disapproves of his musical taste and Dick, an apologetic ambassador of sensitive sounds, has encyclopaedic knowledge of trivia.

Rob adheres to a Top Five philosophy of life. Right now, it's Top Five Worst Break-ups, because live-in lawyer Laura (Iben Hjejle) has just walked out. He is at that stage of evolutionary progression from hapless rabbit to screw up supremo, when a guy steps back and stares into the abyss. Seldom has a film exposed the ugly truth of man's inability to control his life with such wicked accuracy. Those who cannot commit prepare for a socks off good time. At Rob's expense, of course.

Cusack is supreme, Black a revelation (he stole scenes in Jesus' Son with equal ease) and Louiso wimps out for The Windy City. Hjejle is Danish, last seen in the Dogme film, Mifune, as a reformed prostitute, and chosen by Frears because "when you're making a film about a man who's in love with someone, you have to cast somebody you believe he could fall in love with." You believe all right.

Support roles are filled with comic finesse by Lili Taylor, Natasha Gregson Wagner, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Tim Robbins, the beautiful Lisa Bonet and Cusack's sister, Joan. They reinforce a feeling of solidarity that should warm the cockles of Hornby's heart. Respect for the source material is never less than absolute, with imaginative flights of fancy added as a tribute.

The Wolf

Read Katherine M Reynold's review

Read Bazza's interview with John Cusack