Lack of good storyline.

A lot of fun.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

This film is worth watching for Jack Black alone. But it's also a refreshingly real, funny and honest look at the modern man and relationships.

Being on the verge of yet another disastrous breakup, a record store owner starts to present his top five breakups, in an attempt to figure out what went wrong and eventually make things right.It's a very interesting movie, based on a main character who seems to have had and still have problems with the ladies. By constantly speaking to the viewers, he seems determined to bring back his historic failures or even make contact to the persons involved just to realize what went wrong. The way the main character performs and interacts with the audience has to be the best part of the movie. As the story unfolds, the dramatic but also funny life stories begin to influence his life, seeming to affect even his part at the store, but his two unique colleagues and friends will always be there for him.I have to say that the plot is very enjoyable, together with its excellent characters, very well described and played, complex and full of surprises, which manages to transmit plenty of emotion, drama but also laughter. Boredom is out of the question, although the action seems to be on the lower side, having plenty of substance to keep you attracted to what's going on. The finale is very satisfying, making the whole story worthwhile.To sum things up, it's a very good movie, full of great characters and actors which, through a great plot and way of communication, manages to provide a quality time for its viewers. It's not a masterpiece but a wonderful movie without any doubt.

This has generally positive reviews and in fact it's not bad. More than anything else it brings Woody Allen's work to mind. Not his early flat-out comedies and not his late erratica but his midstream features like "Manhattan." John Cusack runs a Chicago shop full of old vinyl records and more recent CDs. He knows his way around pop music. Unfortunately he can't figure out a relational calculus when girls are involved. What we do is follow him through a series of full and partial affairs, all of which seem to puzzle, frustrate, and anger him.The style is really Woody Allen's. When a former lover tells Cusack that she's slept with her new boyfriend but they haven't "done it" yet, he agonizes over the particular meaning of the word "yet." He pummels his friends with questions about it. Does "yet" mean you haven't done it but you intend to do it in the future? In a Woody Allen movie this would be done in narration but the director here has Cusack breaking the fourth wall, directly addressing the camera and leaping with excitement or slumping with depression as he describes one contretemps after another.I could allow myself to be drawn in by some of his feelings -- that the girl is too classy, too good looking, for a schlub like me, even though I myself closely resemble the youthful Robert Redford. Why, just the other day a toothsome blond in the supermarket looked at me and swooned. At least I think it was a swoon. Can swoons follow an expression of utter horror? My understanding of his obsessions with post-Beatles pop music was a little forced because I think most of it stinks. True that one of Miles Davis' better albums is on display, but then some numbskull makes a sarcastic crack about Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.On the whole, if you've enjoyed mid-stream Woody Allen, you should get a kick out of this character-driven story.

High Fidelity is directed by Stephen Frears and adapted to screenplay by D.V. DeVincentis, Steve Pink, John Cusack and Scott Rosenberg from the Nick Hornby novel. It stars Cusack, Jack Black, Iben Hjejle and Todd Louiso. Music is by Howard Shore and Cinematography by Seamus McGarvey.Record store owner and compulsive list-compiler Rob Gordon (Cusack), embark's upon a what does it all mean mission when his latest girlfriend leaves him.Cusack and Pink take Hornby's hugely popular novel and redirect it to Chicago, with joyous results. High Fidelity is a tale of human love and a love of music, a sort of battle of the sexes with a soundtrack of masculine life. Rob's voyage of self discovery is highly amusing, the trials and tribulations of relationships bringing out a number of scenes and scenarios that ring true, not just tickling the funny bones, but also tugging the heart and cradling the brain.Away from the doomed love angles it's the music threads that literally strike the chords. Rob and his two co-workers Barry (Black) & Dick (Louiso) worship music and continually indulge in making top 5 lists whilst bickering with sarcastic glee in the process. All three actors are superb, a trio of odd balls bouncing off of one and other with a zest that's infectious, though it's decidedly Cusack's show. A perpetual miserablist who addresses us the audience at frequent intervals, Rob in Cusack's hands garners sympathy, pity and laughs in equal measure.In the support slots is a ream of talent well in on the joke, beauties like Catherine Zeta-Jones (dropping F-Bombs like they are going out of fashion), Lisa Bonet & Joelle Carter are complimented by the comic skills of Joan Cusack, while Hjejle turns in a wily and womanly performance as the girlfriend who kicks starts Rob's search for meaning. Elsewhere the sight of Tim Robbins as a new age hippy type - with a black belt in martial arts - is so much fun it reminds of what a good comic actor he can be as well. As with Grosse Point Blank, another Cusack/Pink production, sound tracking is everything, and naturally given the setting of the story there is an abundance of classic tunes to delight in. All told it's a special movie, for all sexes and for all music lovers, but especially for anyone who has had relationship problems. Now what did come first, the music or the misery? Priceless. 9/10