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Review

John Cusack is certainly doing something right. He ended the century with the marvelous Being John Malkovich; he begins the new millennium with High Fidelity, a scintillating, often hilarious look at relationships, regrets and LPs. Based on the novel by Nick Hornby, and adapted by Cusack, D.V. DeVincentis, Steve Pink and Scott Rosenberg, High Fidelity maneuvers through the sometimes murky waters of modern romance with comic agility and uncommon insight. Cusack is Rob, a record shop owner in Chicago, who re-examines his life after his girlfriend (the very appealing Hjejle) leaves him. Prone to evaluating anything and everything of importance in iconoclastic top five lists (that any pop culture maven would have to love), Rob sets out to discover what happened in the top five break-ups of his life. List-making has never been so much fun. Reunited with The Grifters director Frears, Cusack is at his absolute best, giving Rob just the right balance of geeky hipster and angst-ridden romantic. Frears elicits natural, canny performances from the entire ensemble, who are fortunate enough to have such an intuitive, witty screenplay from which to work. There's lots of reasons to see High Fidelity, but the top five: 1) Cusack's great turn 2) a smart screenplay 3) what it has to say about men, women and relationships 4) perceptive direction and 5) it's just so damn funny.