Movie Log: Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist

I'm still watching short and funny movies -- and probably will be, off and on, for the next six months or more -- so I decided to get this one, since the reviews are pretty good, and I haven't watched a decent movie about teenagers in love for at least ten years. Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist had the additional advantage, for me, of being set in Manhattan (and a bit of Jersey), so The Wife and I could nitpick the geography and settings.

Michael Cera is Nick, doing a slightly less twitchy and needy version of his usual I'm-a-geeky-gawky-teen routine and deeply pining after the girl (Alexis Dziena's Tris) who just broke up with him. Kat Dennings is Nora, who goes to school with Tris and wants to meet the guy who gave Tris so many great mix CDs. (Guess who that is?)

And they're both heading into the city to see a band they both love -- Where's Fluffy? -- who will be playing a secret concert somewhere, sometime that night. Thousands, seemingly, are searching frantically for Where's Fluffy? by following cryptic random messages, which makes Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, in a twisted way, something of a wet dream for musicians.

They Meet Cute at a show Nick's band is playing early in the evening -- Norah wants to show Tris that she has a boyfriend, and grabs Nick semi-randomly -- and then wander around the city for the rest of the night, together and apart, chasing Norah's drunk friend Caroline, Nick's gay bandmates Thom and Dev, and, of course, Where's Fluffy? It's a movie full of incidents, but the plot is very simple: these two are falling in love as all this other stuff happens.

It's a romantic comedy, so of course it ends well. And it's pleasant along the way, with -- as is to be expected -- a bunch of good, mostly new, music. The leads are oh so very young, though, which will make some viewers feel particularly old.