Stream It Or Skip It: ‘High Fidelity’ On Hulu, Where Zoë Kravitz Plays Nick Hornby’s List-Making, Brokenhearted Record Store Owner

When we heard that there was going to be a TV reboot of High Fidelity, with Zoë Kravitz in the role John Cusack made famous 20 years (!) ago, we were excited. We thought that we were due for an update of Nick Hornby’s novel about heartbreak as told through one person’s music preferences, even though we live in a world where people don’t even really own physical media anymore. And Kravitz seemed to be a good person to take over the role of Rob. But did we get something truly made for 2020? Find out more…

HIGH FIDELITY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: We see the face of a woman, tearing up, who says, “My desert-island, all-time, top five, most memorable heartbreaks, in chronological order…”

The Gist: Rob Brooks (Zoë Kravitz) is giving this list in the midst of her boyfriend, Russell “Mac” McCormack (Kingsley Ben-Adir) packing his stuff and leaving for London after breaking up with her. Mac is now number five on the list, his departure is that devastating to Rob. She thinks they can get back to where they were, be on “the other side of the rock,” she says, recalling a time where they heard a couple fighting on the other side of a rock in the park, but Mac just wants to go and get things over with.

A year later, after not having sex since Mac’s breakup, Rob talks on the phone with her brother Jackson (Rainbow Francks) and his wife Nikki (Nadine Malouf), and tells him, unenthusiastically, that she’s going on a date. She sits at a bar with a vest-wearing dude named Clyde (Jake Lacy), and she’s so bored that she decides to ditch him. But she has to come back to the bar because she forgot her phone, and their mutual love of Fleetwood Mac (Rob goes into chapter and verse about why Rumors isn’t her favorite F-Mac album) helps the date pick up. They sleep together, but she’s again pissed when he leaves the next morning instead of getting breakfast with her like he mentioned.

This is when Rob, who owns a record store in Brooklyn, goes over her top five heartbreaks: childhood crush Kevin Bannister (Clark Furlong), who dumped her hours later; Kat Monroe (Ivanna Sakhno), whom Rob never felt cool enough to hang with, and wasn’t Kat’s type, anyway; Simon Miller (David H. Holmes), who completely “got” Rob, but turned out to be gay — they’re still great friends and he works at the record store; douchey comedian Justin Kit (Justin Silver), who wasn’t nearly as exciting when he no longer had a girlfriend. Then there’s Mac, whom she really thought was the one.

The record store somehow fell into Rob’s lap; now in her 30s, she definitely regrets the shapelessness of her ambition to that point. But she loves music and loves hanging out in the store with Simon and Cherise (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), who may work at the store but seems to be more inclined to rock out to Dexy’s Midnight Runners and berate/sexually harass a handsome customer who Shazams the song that’s playing instead of, you know, asking someone about it.

Rob really thinks she’s done with dating, but then Clyde shows up and explains that he left suddenly because his car was towed, and brought her the breakfast he promised; oh, and we also find out why she showed up to the date with Clyde with an injured hand, due to being distracted after running into someone special to her on the way to the date.

Our Take: We didn’t hate High Fidelity. In fact, as massive fans of Hornby’s novel and the 2000 John Cusack/Jack Black film (which also stared Kravitz’s mother, Lisa Bonet), we thought that there was a lot of merit in gender-flipping Rob’s character and moving the scene to modern-day New York. Kravitz, an executive producer along with Hornby and show creators Veronica West and Sarah Kucserka, does a credible job of making Rob her own. She plays Rob much more quietly than Cusack did (and he wasn’t super-high-key) and surprisingly a little more sad-sacky. But it works, because we need to believe that someone who looks like Kravitz can’t get her romantic shit together, and doesn’t really have her life together, either, and she sells that well.

What we’re not sure is what this updated version really has to say that the novel and movie didn’t say already. The book was written at a time when vinyl was dead, mixtapes were still king, and people were obsessed over which bands were cool and which weren’t. By the time the movie came out, mixtapes turned to mix CDs, Napster was starting up and vinyl was still dead. But the movie worked because it still spoke to how Gen Xers like Rob identify themselves by what they listen to and what they like.

Now, vinyl is on the upswing among purists (though that doesn’t explain how Rob’s store stays in business with no customers and an expensive Manhattan rent), but the idea of “what you like is more important than what you are like,” as Simon tells Rob isn’t really something that millennials identify with that much, at least when it comes to music. Everyone has their playlists and the stuff they like to stream in the car. People can still be rabid fans of bands. But no one uses that as a badge of good taste anymore; they’re too busy taking pictures of their dinner for the ‘Gram than worrying about bands. So it feels that High Fidelity still has that Gen X viewpoint even though the characters are all firmly in the next generation.

So the show still has a very mid-to-late-’90s feel in a lot of ways, especially when it comes to Rob’s to-the-camera top five monologuing. It’s not a style that’s in favor now, because people like being into the story, not having the fourth wall constantly broken (though admittedly Fleabag is one of the few show that makes it work). It was innovative 20 years ago, not so much now.

What we would have appreciated was a really refreshed version of High Fidelity, one that really examined being a 30-something in New York without having much direction in life or love, instead of just a gender-flipped redo of 25-year-old material.

Sex and Skin: We see Rob and Mac having some really romantic sexy times in a flashback, and when Rob gets out of bed with Clyde she’s topless, but if there was anything to see it was obscured by darkness, hair and other things.

Parting Shot: Rob, still feeling down, sits in her chair, listens to “I Can’t Stand The Rain” by Ann Peebles, and smokes a joint. We push in on her as the credits start rolling.

Sleeper Star: Jake Lacy has basically been “boring white dude” in various shows, including the last season of The Office, for the last decade. So he’s got a thankless task playing Clyde, the seemingly most normal person in Rob’s world. It’ll be interesting to see how things with them proceed going forward.

Most Pilot-y Line: It truly feels like Rob, Simon and Cherise hates any music created after 1995 or so. We believe that they like older music, but they don’t like anything newish?

Our Call: STREAM IT, mostly because of Kravitz’s magnetic presence. But the show feels more like a nostalgia trip than something new and fresh.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company.com, RollingStone.com, Billboard and elsewhere.

Stream High Fidelity On Hulu