TIFF: Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist

First things first. Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist is not this year's Juno. As much as the filmakers seem to be asking for the comparison...from their leading man to the credit sequence of the film to the killer soundtrack. It's just not quite that good.



It is, however, a charming movie with good performances from pretty much the entire young cast. Nick (Michael Cera) and Norah (Kat Dennings) meet at a bar where she approaches him to play her 'boyfriend for five minutes' to avoid the scorn of her school's resident mean girl Tris (Alexis Dziena). Unbeknownst to her, Nick is also Tris' ex boyfriend. The rest of the action takes place over a night in New York while they chase after a secret concert, try to keep track of her drunken best friend and run into their respective exes.

The director and the entire cast showed up for the movie. I actually had never seen a larger reserved section of seats at the Ryerson. The moderator did a pretty good job on the post film Q&A, kicking it off by announcing that she didn't want any questions that began with "I love you Michael", which I thought was funny. The cast has great chemistry and seem to truly like one another, with a bunch of chatter and a big group hug on stage before they settled down to take questions.

I was excited to see Jonathan Wright in his first movie role after absolutely loving him in the broadway musical Spring Awakening when I saw it last year. And, in the flurry of exits of the cast, I took the opportunity to tell him so afterwards :-)