Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist

Even the most mordant of critics can occasionally find himself knocked out by the sheer, money-grubbing cynicism a film can display. ‘Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist’ takes everything you loved in three decades of teenage romance and twists it into something unrecognisably desperate and exploitative.

First, there’s Nick (Michael Cera), the kind of lovelorn hipster nerd who makes mixtapes and plays in a failing electro band with two hilarious gay sidekicks. Then there’s Norah, the sad-eyed dreamer no one is attracted to, played by the jaw-detachingly beautiful Kat Dennings. Over the course of a drunken night in NYC, the pair drift together, apart, and back together, to a soundtrack of unmemorable indie-rock whingery.

In this post-‘Juno’ world, teenagers are required to speak like middle-aged music journalists, drink like rampant navvies on shore leave and fornicate like hotel heiresses. So perhaps it’s churlish to expect movies about them to be anything more than crass, offensive and shallow.