Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist: A-

Filled with Lower-East Side indie music, characters who shuttle back and forth in a stale-banana colored Yugo, and that old "meet cute" device, Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist is nonetheless completely, utterly, and excitingly modern. Told in the course of one night, the film is enchanting in its fresh take on all the old tricks—romantic conventions aren't so much trashed as merely discarded in favor for deeper, more vividly domestic (and thereby more sincere) views of our characters. Nick & Norah is a trip, a joy ride, a plug-in-and-let-go existential experience that is, I'm entirely too certain, one of those rarest of cinematic treasures: the once-in-a-decade-or-two romantic comedy that is so clever and bright and new as to not just represent those feelings on screen, but also the feelings of an entire era. What's important, though, isn't how well everything fits into the old, if high-standard, mold. What matters is how refreshingly un- it all can be; the details of courtship and love and life in this city-that-never-sleeps are fleshed out with the deftest of touches, and so their world we visit is also subtly but continually opened up—blossoming right before our eyes.

The boy: Nick (Michael Cera, who's quickly becoming the quietest of indie triumphs). He's a senior in high school, from the suburbs of Jersey, and the only straight member in a very hardcore rock band: The Jerk-Offs. Plus, his girl—Tris (Alexis Dziena)—just kinda, sorta, broke up with him…a while ago. He can't quite get over it (and is, in fact, still sending her mixes from his wounded heart). And then his friends/band-mates, Dev (Rafi Gavron) and Thom (Aaron Yoo), pull out into NYC night-life to play a gig…

The girl: Norah (Kat Dennings). She, too, is a senior (maybe attending Brown in the fall, maybe getting a job), but she's from Englewood, Jewish, and apparently has more influence in the club scene than just about anyone save Jesus. That's why she happens to be in a club one night with her friend Caroline (Ari Gaynor, who—if she's not the heart—is the comedic engine continually at work in the background, churning out consistent laughs) when Nick's band takes the stage…and Nick sees Tris…and Norah needs someone to pose as her boyfriend.

The meet-cute: you already saw coming. But it's the sole conventional element in a staging that prepares us not in the slightest for a very period ("period" being The Now) narrative, filled with subplots about looking for your drunk-buddies, supporting your "uni-boob" with the correct bra, and finding clues as to the location of the super-secret show by the super-cult band Where's Fluffy? Once Nick and Norah have become acquainted, they're far from gaga over the other. (For one, he still finds every moment an opportunity to pump Norah about her frenemy's feelings over the break-up.) But we watch them find that connection, and—as directed by Peter Sollett from a wisely urban script by Lorene Scafaria based on the titular novel—the search is done in just the perfect way: through shared smiles, jokes that went bad half-way through (but it's the attempt that matters, anyway), and moments shared in the oddest of places, made homely and yours through the sheer power of being there. In short, Nick and Norah find each other in Nick & Norah as if they were every teenager in the world, crammed into two symbolic bodies—flirting and bantering and letting silence flow out awkwardly in perfect imitation of the real thing, so as to make it real. There's derivation in the concept, but triumph in its staging.

"I just want to hold your hand," Dev tells Nick, in one of the many inspired moments in the movie, and that same easy-going whimsy of love and lust and everything-in-between just sort of happening carries over to the treatment of the film's every character. Dev and Thom (and the no-name beefy pick-up that starts tagging along with them after The Jerk-Offs' first gig) are gay, but their no one's flamboyant anything, just as Norah is Jewish—but you'd only know it when she brings up one of her favorite philosophies from said religion (which lets Nick put his own funky little, completely sincere spin on it). This is the New York City of the new millennium, and it belongs to these people, the movie tells us, who find life and love in the moments when no one is looking, and everything just comes rushing up to meet you. Say "Hello" and dive right in.