Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist

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Rated PG-13 for mature thematic material including teen drinking, sexuality, language and crude behavior

Released: October 3, 2008 Nationwide

Score: 3.5

Cast: Michael Cera, Kat Dennings, Alexis Dziena, Ari Graynor, Aaron Yoo

Director: Peter Sollett
Producer: Chris Weitz, Paul Weitz, Andrew Miano, Andrew Miano
Writer: Rachel Cohn, David Levithan, Lorene Scafaria
Genre: Comedy

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If you liked "Superbad" and "Juno," loved fragile everyteen Michael Cera in both and are aching to see his next seminal high-school coming-of-age comedy, uh, don't.

"Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist" is stupefyingly inane, a movie that will let you down harder than a breakup by text message.

It's not Cera's fault. He plays the same character as always -- an aloof social outcast. He operates with a quiet confidence, wears his wounded spirit on his tattered sleeve and never knows the right thing to say to his soul mate until the very end.

Cera's character, Nick, has just been dumped by his coldhearted girlfriend, Tris (Alexis Dziena). To chase away his misery, Nick heads out with his gay bandmates to play a gig and then hunt New York City for an elusive underground band that announces its shows with a series of cryptic scavenger-hunt clues.

Norah (Kat Dennings) is the daughter of a wealthy record exec; she's like Juno, only not quite as cool. Norah runs into Tris, her rival, at Nick's show and asks Nick to pretend to be her boyfriend for five minutes. There's a connection there, so the five minutes turn into one long, long night of half-baked clue-collecting, contrived fights and dopey ruminations on religion and music.

Director Peter Sollett, who made such an intimate and gritty portrait of teen life in the 2002 indie "Raising Victor Vargas," follows up with something that seems like it was made by a ghost alien from Triton, moon of Neptune.

Kids in the world of "Nick and Norah" traverse the city at their whim at all hours of the night, enter nightclubs with ease -- note to screenwriters: it's funnier when you need to produce a McLovin ID -- break into music studios to have sex and basically act the way adults would if they got to be teens again while retaining all the privileges of age.

All the ingredients are here for something special, including a well-regarded novel by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan as source material, but nothing clicks. There are hardly any laughs, no sense of urgency to the plot, and Cera and Dennings don't convince you that their characters are meant for each other.

You feel like a bored, disgusted parent stuck chauffeuring a group of rowdy, idiotic kids around town. They seem to be having fun, but you're not a part of it.

The most contemptible character is Norah's ever-wasted, promiscuous pal, Caroline (Ari Graynor), who is a walking, stumbling and slurring Amber Alert. It's just not funny watching a stupid-drunk 16-year-old puke and pass out.

Other confounding problems: Nick's friends seem to be gay only to be conduits for gay jokes, and all the conversation about life-changing music isn't backed up by a memorable soundtrack.

"Nick and Norah" lasts only 90 minutes, but it sure feels infinite.