Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Rollerskate skinny, straight edge, lately dumped Nick (Michael Cera) is playing bass as the only hetero member of queer core indie band The Jerk Offs, when heartstoppingly beautiful, college bound Norah (Kat Dennings), spies an unwanted ex in the crowd. She recruits Nick to be her show boyfriend “for five minutes” and the pair bond over mix tapes and a mutual love of an underground, publicity-shy musical combo known as Where’s Fluffy?
Based on the pop teen novel by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan, Nick and Norah extends its slender premise into one magical evening in New York. A snapshot of The Teenagers of Today, it’s a delightful ethnograph, all youthful idioms and jaded posturing. These are the wicked cool kids, brought to you by Peter Sollett, the hip director of Raising Victor Vargas. In case you didn’t know it, Devendra Banhart cameos, so does Bishop Allen, and Eddie Kaye Thomas pops up as Jesus.
It’s This Year’s Juno, but it’s also This Year’s Sixteen Candles; a sweet, self-conscious little thing with an aching, tender heart. Pity they chose to pad out the running time with a gross-out subplot spun around Norah’s hard-living BF, Caroline (Ari Graynor). They should have ditched the supporting cast and made this into Before Sunrise for Pitchfork readers; there’s evidence here to suggest that Mr. Cera and Ms. Dennings, the endlessly likeable leads, have both the charm and the chops to have made it work.