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

"What really matters is what you like, not what you are like.'' So we're told in this witty, wise and just plain enjoyable film based on Nick Hornby's best-selling novel. For record store owner Rob (John Cusack) and his employees, taste defines everything. Especially musical taste.

So when Rob's girlfriend Laura (Iben Hjejle) leaves him, it really starts to hurt only when she hooks up with a Supertramp fan (a wonderfully campy Tim Robbins). Bad taste is the worst possible crime for Rob and his two employee-buddies Barry (Jack Black of Pixies fame) and Dick (Todd Louiso), who keep you in stitches as they overwhelm you with their passion for music. Or is that obsession?

Director Stephen Frears (The Grifters) keeps the jokes humming along with a quick pace and smooth transitions between the present and the past, as Rob recalls his top-five worst breakups. He views his ex-girlfriends only as lessons about himself, often with amusing consequences. Cusack is the only actor who could play a man stuck in adolescence so sympathetically, charming the audience even as he reveals more and more of his self-absorption. Hjejle gives a subtle performance with just the right low-voiced indulgence of this boy-man.

Fans of Hornby's novel may be disappointed that the locale has been shifted to Chicago from London, although the film's dialogue and feel manage to evoke the book, with its pop-culture savvy and direct line to the male psyche. Chicago's musical history does make it an appropriate setting, and certainly easier to swallow than New York or Los Angeles.

Musical taste is the religion, the barometer. Rob can tell that teenage hoodlums who raid his store are stealing for someone else because of the records they turn over when caught.

Yet there is hope, even amid the hard and fast rules ("Don't tell anyone you don't own Blond on Blond,'' Barry warns a hapless customer, who promptly buys the album). After all, a beautiful singer (a cool Lisa Bonet) manages to make even Peter Frampton sound good to this trio of scornful critics. Perhaps love can conquer all.

Read The Wolf's review