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Up to this point, like the sins of Dorian Gray, Rob's transgressions are pretty much left to the imagination. But when we discover what truly drove the couple apart, the film changes tone. It becomes a confessional, and you forget about the Fourth Wall. Rob isn't muttering to himself, or to the camera. He's talking to YOU. He's your pal. He's a little messed up but he's got a lot of regrets, a surprising amount of heart, and far more self awareness than we've been led to believe up to this point. Maybe he's NOT going to spend the whole movie wallowing in self pity.

Maybe he's going to take stock of himself and grow up?

Uh....no. Rob has an epiphany all right, but what does he decide to do about it? He decides to check in with all Five of his exes, and ask them straight up what went wrong.

Yes, you heard me. Rob takes the important and very adult step of trying to do just that. Just...in the creepiest way possible. He starts tracking them all down, one by one, to ASK them why things didn't work out. And they all more or less buy into it because it's a movie, which is the only place in the universe these kinds of things can happen. And remember, we're talking about John Cusack, who's made a career out of turning "creepy" into "sweetly misguided." It's a good thing, because if Brad Pitt were playing this part the movie would have ended with him in the electric chair, laughing his ass off as he sizzles like a piece of bacon and his eyeballs dribble down his cheeks.

Instead, we accept it, even though Rob's Mea Culpa World Tour only accentuates his massive narcissism. But our deepest personal problems are the ones we have to come to terms with on our own. We have to carry our own burdens, and find our own answers. And right when it seems as though High Fidelity is seriously trying to address that, the entire story goes off the rails. It unravels like a cheap sweater, and at the end you're left with a bunch of loose ends that only feels like an ending because you're told that it is.

Unfortunately, High Fidelity isn't a movie about people, or feelings, or redemption. This is a Greek tragicomedy set at the twilight of the 20th century, with Tenacious D and the Tainted Ramblings of Rob Gordon's Mind as the chorus. It's filled with Three's Company style dramatic malapropisms, characters who serve no clear purpose (Lisa Bonet shows up for some reason, makes you want to stab yourself in the face and then vanishes) and story divergences that never come back together so much as they dissolve like Kool Aid and end up part of the solution by default.

Does this film want to be a romantic comedy, a Gen X slacker treatise on settling down and sorting your life out, or an irreverent testosterone romp about bros and hos? Who can say - at any given time it is all of these things. I'm pretty sure what High Fidelity is trying to tell us is that when your biggest concern in life is having nobody to share it with, it's easy to forget to LIVE your life - thus ensuring that that every time you do meet someone, the only things you have to share are angst and bitterness.

If, at any time, John Cusack had simply turned to the camera and said THAT, it all would have made a lot more sense.

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