Filmbook: "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist" (2008)

The trailers for "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist," the recent teen comedy and YA adaptation starring Michael Cera and Kat Dennings, alluded to what I discovered was true about the film: It's not all that faithful to the book. It is, however, faithful in the right ways.

Because ...INFINITE PLAYLIST the book is narrated by its titular characters, one chapter after the other, the reader is limited to what they see and know. A strength of this approach is that you come to know Nick and Norah far outside the lines of what they reveal to each other, but the chapters which consist of more contemplation than action (for example, Norah stands in a grubby bar bathroom and thinks about her ex-boyfriend) would not be as dynamic onscreen.

To cope with this problem, the film version of ...INFINITE PLAYLIST enlarges the roles of a few very secondary characters in order to give them agency, so the camera can follow them around sometimes. Norah's drunken friend Caroline (played Ari Graynor), the person who drags her to the concert where she met Nick in the first place, gets her own wavy-lined journey when she's trying to get home, and Nick's bandmates along with a new friend (Jonathan B. Wright of "Spring Awakening") are driving around in a van looking for their own fun. We even get a brief vignette or two of Nick's ex Tris (Alexis Dziena) dragging her new arm candy around after Nick. These paths along with those of Nick and Norah cross and intersect throughout the film in a way that reminded me of the crazy night depicted in "Sixteen Candles"... only thoroughly 2008, so there are cell-phone mishaps.

Despite those changes, and the fact that Nick and Norah spend more time together in this movie than they do in the book, "...Infinite Playlist" did a great job of capturing the tone of the book, something I frankly thought wouldn't be possible. Sure, celebrity cameos and an exquisitely gross scene in the Port Authority are added for leavening, but the notion of their night together being a Manhattan fairy tale is still maintained I think by the end, which is truly joyous. After I saw this movie, late on a weeknight, I wanted to stay up all night just for the fun of it. And despite the grimier aspects, I was surprised by how much New York is, like in the book, a character in the movie: the real agent of change that connects Nick and Norah, who may never have met had they stayed home in New Jersey. In other words, it was exactly the movie this book deserved.

Filmbook verdict: If you can set aside your cynical worldview, read the book and see the movie.

Silly kids in love

I was going to save this for a Filmbook entry, but I cannot tell a lie: The only reason I picked up NICK AND NORAH'S INFINITE PLAYLIST, a book I had happily walked past on the New Fiction table without a second glance, because of the trailer. Specifically, one actor in the trailer. Most specifically, Mr. Michael Cera.

I don't have a crush on Cera, best known as George Michael Bluth on "Arrested Development," Paulie in "Juno" and Evan in "Superbad." He is adorable, but maybe because he's only 2 years older than my brother, I feel like I would make a better protective sibling towards him. His band could crash on my floor! We could go to diners and I could give him advice! I am not a creepy old lady!

In any case, his next movie is based on this YA novel by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan about two teenagers who meet at a rock concert in New York and have this kind of madcap night. This book is very short -- "You could probably read it in like an hour" was my roommate's note -- and, for me, kind of a modern-day Manhattan fairy tale. (People who are not teenagers will note the titular nod to "The Thin Man," to begin with.) Nick has just played with his constantly-being-renamed band and is about to run right into his ex-girlfriend and her new flame. Norah is minding her friend the party girl and wishing she were going to do something fun. Nick begs Norah to pretend she's his new girlfriend for the next five minutes. And off it goes from there.

If I were 13 I would probably sleep with this book under my pillow and wake up crushed that my boring teenage life was not like this and there were no boys like Nick out there. Since I am not 13, I appreciated the use of real-life New York locales like Veselka and the strange sweetness of these two characters who are kind of lost but finally having a little fun. And that was enough for me to like this book, even if I didn't love it or want to keep it out of the library. I liked it enough to check out Cohn and Levithan's follow-up, NAOMI AND ELY'S NO-KISS LIST, which I liked less but identified with more (if that makes any sense). Consider my movie expectations raised.

Screenshot: Collider.com