Rob (Cusack) and Barry (Black) at work. Rob and Laura (Hjejle). No, Cusack never trips over an ottoman.

Sitting in front of the computer, sick with the flu, it's hard for me to put together a series of coherent thoughts about High Fidelity. But I know I want to see it again. And again. And I'll buy it when it's out on DVD, too.

If you're unfamiliar with Nick Hornby's novel on which this film is based, here's the plot in a nutshell: record-shop owner Rob Gordon loses his girlfriend, ruminates on his string of romantic failures and, while attempting to get his girlfriend back, begins the slow, painful trek into real-world adulthood.

People who loved Hornby's novel -- and make no mistake, it has a lot of admirers -- undoubtedly had reservations about the film version of High Fidelity. Cusack and Co. had already changed the setting from London to Chicago; could other, more appalling liberties be far behind?

No. Not really. High Fidelity, Cusack has suggested, "could have taken place in any Western city." Any city with decent used record stores, anyway. Mindful of their probable audience's tastes, Cusack and his co-writers Steve Pink, Scott Rosenberg and D. V. DeVincentis have "indie-rockified" the story. In the novel, main character Rob's tastes were skewed towards vintage rock and R&B, with a definite scorn towards punk rock. In the film, Rob sports a Bauhaus t-shirt in one scene, listens to Belle and Sebastian in another...and frankly, it seems to suit him a little better.

Plot-wise, nothing much happens...either in the novel or the film. High Fidelity's conflicts are very much of the "man against himself" variety. Once Rob realizes that his estranged girlfriend, Laura (played by Danish actress Iben Hjejle), is someone he doesn't want to be without, he needs to learn to shift his focus to her needs, rather than worrying only about himself. He also needs to discover a truth that all married or long-term-committed couples must find, eventually: that the "thrill" of meeting someone exciting and new doesn't magically go away once you've hooked up with a partner. Recognizing the value of a solid, long-term relationship over the excitement of a new fling is Rob's journey -- his personal attainment of "high fidelity", so to speak. It's a sentiment echoed in the film's constant "Top Five" lists: while new records offer a steady stream of exciting new ideas, it's long-time favorites that are ranked among the best.

If you've ever worked in a record store or spent a lot of time hanging out in one, High Fidelity is for you. If finding record stores is your first order of business whenever you visit a new city, High Fidelity is for you, too. If you've ever endured complaints about the excessive size of your record collection...well, you get the picture. All of High Fidelity's best scenes take place in Champion Vinyl, Rob's record shop -- a "set" so lovingly created, even down to the stickers on the counters, that you'll swear it's a real shop (albeit one where the record-filing system is either a little lax, or is alphabetical from right to left, allowing Spacemen 3 and Stereolab albums to come after the Turn-On LP). You'll want to shop there. Even the cluttered back room is perfect -- a messy but comfortable cave of stale coffee, cigarette butts and music stuff. For every fifteen people in the audience who see this room and think "eeeeuck," there's one person -- quite possibly you -- who'd trade his/her crappy day job to be there, even if it meant a cut in pay.

Perfect, too, are Champion Vinyl's employees -- blunt and arrogant Barry (Tenacious D's Jack Black) and shy Dick (Todd Louiso), who can barely carry on a non-music-related conversation. Barry does what every record store employee wants to do: berates customers for their awful taste, browbeats customers into buying "essential" albums and generally makes his tastes known without caring what anyone else thinks. Dick, meanwhile, hides a savage streak of sarcasm beneath his retiring exterior, and can reel off an encyclopedia of musical knowledge if so inspired. Together, they're the "musical moron twins", adding magic to every scene -- particularly a series of scenes dealing with Ian, an odious yuppie (overplayed to perfection by Tim Robbins) who has stolen Laura's affections. Dick and Barry make small journeys of their own, too: Dick conquers his shyness and finds a girl who shares his tastes, and Barry learns...well, how to be a bit less of a prick.

Post-breakup Rob does his requisite soul-searching, proceeding to contact the other four women in his list of top five breakups (one of novel's five has been dropped entirely from the film). We see them, both then and now, as Rob's efforts to determine what went wrong leave him mired in the same self-centeredness that sabotaged his relationship with Laura. He dallies briefly with a singer, Marie DeSalle. In the novel, DeSalle is an American, making her relatively exotic to British Rob. In the film, in an unspoken concession to the character's need for exoticism, Marie is played by Lisa Bonet (though the role is smaller than in the novel). To its credit, the film does nothing whatsoever to address inter-racial romance issues; it simply lets its characters connect, and eventually disconnect.

Despite this brief romantic sideline, Rob is determined to get Laura back. Immature methods, like constant phone calls to Ian's home, fail. In the end, it's a small, selfless act by Rob, coming at just the right moment, that sets their reunion in motion. This isn't a Hollywood-style romance by any means -- neither Rob nor Laura is a prize, and at times we wonder what either sees in the other. It is, however, one of the more honest film romances you'll ever watch. Rob and Laura seem like real people. We realize that we can't possibly see what Rob sees in Laura; we haven't known her as long as he has, or shared their experiences. It's sufficient that Rob loves her, and essential to us that she loves him back.

The film boasts a lot of high-profile actresses in near-cameo roles, most likely wooed by the overall quality of the script. Even though most of High Fidelity's female characters play small roles -- ex-girlfriends, etc. -- the movie treats all of them as real human beings rather than single-note caricatures. Not all of them are likeable or even sympathetic characters, but none of them are put through the wringer for comedy or plot's sake.

Only one character, a Chicago Reader columnist (yeah, right) played by Natasha Gregson Wagner, failed to ring entirely true for me. She's Rob's final temptation -- a woman whose knowledge of music is at once impressive (she can tag Stereolab's "Lo Boob Oscillator" as Stereolab within 2 seconds of its start, and can decide it's an excellent song in less than 10 seconds) and peculiarly flawed (she can ID Stereolab out of the box but hasn't heard "Lo Boob Oscillator"?). I think the Stereolab thing just bugged me.

For Chicagoans and Chicagophiles, High Fidelity is a special treat, offering a loving visual tribute to the city. It's far more than the usual skyline shots, too. Chicago music gliterati make multiple appearances -- watch for a cameo by Tortoise's Jeff Parker, for instance. And perhaps you'll even get a little choked up when the now-closed Lounge Ax makes an appearance, unwittingly setting High Fidelity prior to 2000. It's also a bit odd to see Rob's apartment decorated with posters for shows that I attended, further tightening the coils of realism.

The transition from book to film has rarely been handled so carefully. Cusack and Co. cherry-pick all the best bits from Hornby's novel, and add new material worthy of Hornby's name. The book's plot is streamlined, with a few weaker characters and scenes dropped, such as his rather annoying reworking of the old joke in which a cheated-on wife is instructed to "sell my car and send me whatever you get for it". The film adds two new characters, Justin and Vincent, a pair of sticky-fingered skater kids whose presence seems unnecessary at first, but whose actions guide Rob to a new beginning and the film to a more satisfying conclusion than the book offered.

In the novel, Barry and Dick speculate, wrongheadedly, that you need to own at least 500 albums to be considered a "real" person. I disagree -- and so would Rob by the film's end -- but I think owning at least 500 albums will help you to enjoy High Fidelity more. You may find yourself sitting in the theater, thinking "this movie is about me." And it is. It's a love story for music geeks, about learning to be more than the sum of your record collection.

Cusack's Rob has a vinyl collection many of us would kill for. Hell, I'd kill for the shelves he's got it on, which would hold my vinyl collection quite nicely. After the breakup with Laura, Rob reorganizes his record collection from chronological to autobiographical order. While most of the other people in the theater were laughing at this, I was thinking about the fact that my records long ago escaped the bounds of my very lax chronological filing system, and that I ought to get them into proper order soon, and wouldn't shelves like Rob's be a nice incentive to do so? But High Fidelity isn't about getting your record collection in order; it's about doing the same thing with your life.

Reviewed by George Zahora