Not What You're Like, But What You Like

I remember writing something earlier about how I was going to explain how High Fidelity ruined its potential to be a perfect film. Most of these flaws come from uninspired changes to Nick Hornby's book, and others are just flaws that come with bad choices when making a movie. If you haven't read the book, I recommend it, because otherwise this rant won't be as cool.
My main gripe with the movie adaptation was the character of Laura (played in the film by Iben Hjejle). In the book, Laura was more of a sympathetic character and you could understand her perspective on the crumbling relationship she had with Rob (John Cusack). Movie Laura was really unlikable. This made the movie's plot (which revolves around Rob's and Laura's complicated relationship) difficult to swallow. If Laura comes off as icy and shallow, it's difficult to understand why Rob wants her back so much (personally, I would have liked the movie more if Rob ended up with Marie DeSalle). Book Laura was the kind of person you'd feel completely lost without, and you were kinda pissed at Rob for not seeing this earlier. Not so much in the movie, where you're pissed at Rob for not forgetting about her real quick. So, gripe #1: Movie Laura is a jerk.
The other gripes I have about this movie are pretty much superficial, but they did have quite an impact on how I saw the film after reading the book. One such gripe is the part in which Rob is asking Barry (Jack Black) whether or not his saying "I haven't seen Evil Dead 2 yet" denotes a desire to see the movie (a hypothetical experiment he is inspired to conduct after being told by Laura that she hasn't had sex with her rebound boyfriend Ian (Tim Robbins) yet). It's a valid question and all, but it's Barry's response that irks me. He's not exactly following Rob's train of thought, so he tells him that anyone would want to see it because "it's so funny, and violent, and the soundtrack kicks ass..." Though Evil Dead 2 is funny and violent, it's soundtrack is just moody, atmospheric horror stuff. This response puzzled me for years until I finally read the book. In the book, Rob asks Barry the same question, but instead of Evil Dead 2, it's Reservoir Dogs. Now the whole discourse makes sense to me. Reservoir Dogs is funny, is violent, and its soundtrack does kick ass. So my question is this: Why change this conversation at all? Or, if you were going to change it, why leave the bit about the soundtrack in? In a movie/book that is largely punctuated by pop culture references, this travesty should not have happened. Gripe #2: Why?









My last gripe is in regards to Rob's stupid hairdo. This one is pretty self-explanatory; Rob's hair has that Boris Karloff Frankenstein's monster thing going on, much akin to Wayne Campbell when he's not wearing his Wayne's World cap. Normally a bad hairdo doesn't affect a movie's watchability, but in this case it's that bad. My visualization of Rob Gordon that I made when I was reading the book had much cooler hair. Gripe #3: Stupid Frankenstein hair (see Sheree's blog for a sweet exposition of this anomaly).
That's about it. If Mr. Stephen Frears took these things into consideration, I think High Fidelity would have been perfect. His casting of Jack Black and Todd Louiso as Rob's snobby clerks Barry and Dick? Perfect. His decision to change the location from London to Chicago? Nice. Marie DeSalle played by Lisa Bonet, who is hot(Lili Taylor and Catherine Zeta Jones were great in their roles as well) ? Very nice. The scene where Rob visualizes all of the different ways he'd like to respond to Ian's conflict resolution, especially the one where he knocks his teeth out with the phone and Dick drops a TV on his head? Priceless. If only Laura wasn't so lame, the Reservoir Dogs/Evil Dead 2 thing was sorted out, and Rob's hair wasn't so freakish, it would be one of the greatest movies of all time.