Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist (2008) +

A sweet, simple teen romantic comedy with a distinctively contemporary verve. Michael Cera and Kat Dennings play the title characters. Cera's Nick is a painfully romantic kid, who's stuck in a swoonpit for his ex-girlfriend Tris (Alex Dziena giving an empathetic performance in the bitch role) even as she's moved on. Dennings's Norah is a "not high school pretty" and painfully intelligent girl who's burdened with big boobs and a famous/powerful father. This combination of features has cultivated an unhelpful cynicism in Norah, who regards any boy's interest with a weary wariness. Nora's ex-boyfriend -- a delightfully smarmy Jay Baruchel as the lead singer in an Israeli rock band -- embodies the worst of both of the mercenary attractions to Norah, and it's compelling to watch Dennings's Nora inhabit the unpleasantness of his attention. (What I like about the framing of this romance is that we see both Nick and Norah's humiliations in not letting go of these awful exes not as simply pathetic, but as a gesture of how hard it can be to let go of what you know. For both characters, the ex relationships are mostly verification that it is possible for someone to love them a little and it's really terrifying to let that go.) But I also like the framing of the story for the way these characters inhabit a complex social universe that's both plausible and delightfully fantastic. I love the simple high school conceit with music as the currency of self (Nick's been making Tris excellent mix cds, which Norah's been rescuing from the trash at school -- so Norah's sorta fallen in swoon with Nick long before she ever met him). I also like how Nick and Norah both have unlikely friends. Nick's the straight-boy mascot of a batch of cute, wackogay rock boys. Norah's best friend is the proto-alcoholic basket case Caroline (played brilliantly by the hilarious Ari Graynor, who inhabits a humiliation narrative with a just light enough touch to keep it from getting entirely sad). There're great comic set pieces, a "fantastic" (both in the most excellent and utter fantasy sense) culmination of Nick and Norah's romance, some genuinely funny/strange moments, and a sense of giddy adventure that comes from the "crazy NY night" conceit. In many ways, it's a perfect teen romantic comedy -- loaded with attractive kids giving sweetly silly performances while also being allowed to be smart at the same time. I guess I liked it for being everything I like/d about Juno (without the supposedly elevating gravitas) and also being everything I like/d about Can't Hardly Wait (without cloying Hollywood veneer). A genuinely sweet and genuinely funny and basically smart teen romantic comedy. They really should make more of them.