High Fidelity
Rating: R
Director: Stephen Frears
Starring: John Cusack, Iben Hjejle, Jack Black, Tim Robbins, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Joan Cusack

With the return of the weepy romantics to the big screen -- witness "Here On Earth," "Whatever it Takes," and "Down to You," just to name a few -- perhaps it's time to analyze the Top 5 Characterstics of a Teen Romance Film. #1: Guy and girl must break up at some point in the movie, only to be reunited at the end, preferably in the rain. #2: Both guy and girl must have quirky friends who provide comic relief. The male friends must be clueless about romance, while the female friends are always romantic gurus. #3: The movie must have a soundtrack that's guaranteed to go gold. #4: The women must always be more attractive than the men. This holds true no matter how hunky or perfectly molded the men are...an Adonis only calls for an Aphrodite. #5: The guy's main problem must be fidelity, while the girl's main problem must be getting over the guy who's not faithful to her.

"High Fidelity" is a movie aimed at a slightly older crowd than the Teen Romance Film, a crowd that's already gone through the "Here On Earth" stage. Here's John Cusack, who the target audience will vividly remember from "Say Anything." And he's up to his old John Cusack tricks again. In fact, "High Fidelity" falls into every single trap of a formula Teen Romance Film listed above. So why is it such a great film?

Maybe it's the maturity, here defined as the awareness of immaturity. Rob (Cusack) is still living in the same pop-punk world of his 80s youth -- running a record store that survives on obscure vinyl, and reliving the horror of discovering his first love kissing someone else under the bleachers in middle school. He's still hanging with the music geek crowd and throwing himself into a temper tantrum at every sexual rejection, every break up, every remembrance of loves past. As his sometime girlfriend Laura (Hjejle) puts it, "You're the same person you used to be." But he's aware of that, and in some respect, that's maturity. Just as we, in the theater, are aware of the fact that we're back to watching weepy romantics all over again. And that's okay.

Maybe it's the cameos. As good as the principle actors are -- Black and Todd Louiso play Rob's record store employees with panache, and sister Joan is her usual perky pro as Laura's best friend -- it's the incidental appearances that give the romance comedic life. Robbins is shamelessly smarmy as Laura's new love interest, a world-music loving pony-tail of a prick who survives on slick charm and irrepressible condescension. Zeta-Jones gives her all on the opposite end of shallow, as an undeniably sexy motor-mouth who views the world on her own terms and seduces people along for the ride, no matter how empty that ride is. Lisa Bonet, the former Cosby kid, provides a good turn as the mystical singer willing to bed a loser, and then there's the Boss. Bruce Springsteen. Playing Dear Abby. As Mastercard would say, "Priceless."

Or maybe it's that soundtrack, which, trust me, is guaranteed to go gold.

Whatever the reason, the movie strikes the right chord and overcomes its humble origins. Rob addresses the camera shamelessly at every opportunity -- even in public with extras planted about him pretending that this nutso isn't speaking to some invisible audience. This narrative trick, which is so annoying on television, works in this context because, deep down, "High Fidelity" is about pop music. Rob's life, as portrayed here, is just like a pop song, with ups and downs and a repeating chorus of heartbreak that shifts slightly to redemption in the chord-filled coda. Sure, he's continually breaking down the fourth wall to pour out his soul like a couch-bound psychiatric patient, but isn't that what Marvin Gaye does when he busts out of the gates and wails, "I've been really tryin' baby"?

Pop musicians are always speaking to us, right to the core of our miseries. When it's done well and honestly, we embrace the intrusion and make their music a part of our lives. Rob, at one point, organizes his vast record collection "autobiographically" from the first song he heard to the most recent, with all the life twists and bends in between. In fact, when pop music is done well, it's not just pop music...it's something more, a sort of emotional road map through the disjointed synapses of our aging (maturing) minds. And so it is that this movie isn't just a weepy romance. Sure, it might have all the ingredients for pure pop, but in the end, this film's got soul. A-

The Road to Eldorado
Rating: PG
Director: Bibo Bergeron & Will Finn
Starring: Kevin Kline, Kenneth Branagh, Rosie Perez, Armand Assante

"The Road to El Dorado" has got so many homosexual innuendos in it that if Dreamworks had a theme park, you can bet your last peseta that the Southern Baptists would boycott it. That's not to say that Miguel (Branagh) and Tulio (Kline) are gay. In fact, Tulio so overtly gets it on with the sultry large-breasted Chel (Perez) that "Road" got slapped with a PG rating. I'm just saying that...well, I'm just saying that I'd never seen two male characters gaze so lovingly at each other in an animated feature before, not to mention the skinny-dipping-in-the-hot-tub scene (complete with a bare-bottomed romp through the Amazon jungle).

I remember distinctly a history class in high school when it was finally revealed to me the whole truth about the "conquest of the New World." It disturbed me more to find out that Europeans slaughtered and poisoned their way into the Americas than to find out that Santa wasn't real. After all, I could understand the harmless lie that is Santa Claus. I couldn't understand the way I was brought up to worship explorers like Christopher Columbus only to find out later the genocidal consequences of the age of exploration. With time, of course, I've absorbed the many-faceted story that is the European invasion of this continent, which has brought good and evil but above all was an inevitable course of fate and history. Now I can see why the downside of Columbus' voyage to America is played down for the children -- it's a bitter pill to swallow and one that requires a more open mindset to digest than the average eight-year-old possesses.

The same could be said for sexuality. Actually, it could be said that many people never mature enough to grasp the truth of sexuality and its many incarnations. Why, then, does "The Road to El Dorado" tackle both issues? Don't get me wrong. For the kids watching this movie, it's just a silly action adventure with lots of cool special effects and animals making funny faces. But the adults will undoubtedly feel uncomfortable watching the "evangelization" of the "heathens" in a children's movie, or watching the "bonds of friendship" work their three-way magic between Tulio, Miguel and Chel.

The plot carries through rather predicatably and safely. This is the kind of movie where an extra is plucked up by the jaws of a monster, chewed up and tossed on the ground, only to mutter, "I'm okay!" Then he's stepped on by said monster's giant foot. And from under that foot, you hear, "I'm still okay!" That's right kids, nobody dies in the cartoons. This is the kind of movie that touches on the brutal campaign of Cortez to bring Catholicism to the heathens and gold to the King, then ends with his plot thwarted! Yep, a complete historical lie, just like the one spoon-fed to youngsters every October on Columbus Day.

Is there an award given out to the animated movie that can side-step the most controversial issues in an hour and a half? Because if there's not, I really want to know what Dreamworks was thinking. It's one thing to touch on the nerves of America in a movie for adults, like "American Beauty." It's quite another to mess around with such hot topics as genocide and homosexuality in a kids' movie. And don't tell me the gay undertones were unintended. You don't write a scene with two bare-naked men running around and laughing while Elton John is singing Tim Rice lyrics and then turn around and say, "Homosexuality? What homosexuality?"

It could be that Dreamworks is up to some noble cause, attempting to bring these two hotbed issues into the mainstream. If so, that's certainly a nice goal, but they'd be stupid not to realize that America's not mature enough to discuss this with its children. What next? An animated movie about how there's no Santa Claus? C-

If you can't get enough of bad girl Rose McGowan from her feature film appearences, you could try the low-budget shocker "Devil in the Flesh." We did, and it's tough to see why McGowan, who already had a couple of juicy roles under her belt, would agree to appear in such a routine thriller. This role is much more suited to a former child star trying to change her image, like Drew Barrymore in "Poison Ivy" or Alyssa Milano in "Embrace of the Vampire." We're not sure what McGowan was trying to prove.

After her mother and her mother's boyfriend are killed in a suspicious house fire, Debbie Strand (McGowan) is sent to live with her grandmother. In typical trash movie fashion, the grandmother is a Bible-thumping disiplinarian who is convinced that she can undo years of Debbie's presumed hedonism with some "correctional therapy." Meanwhile, at her new high school, Debbie develops a crush on one of her teachers, Mr. Rinaldi (Alex McArthur). The driving force of the film is that Debbie, when faced with a challenge, is happy to meet it in the most violent manner possible. We began to wonder if her old high school offered an advanced class in body handling and disposal, because Debbie tears into the local population with a vengeeance. First she gasses her grandmother's dog Bibi to death with bug spray ("Hasta la vista, Bibi"), then bludgeons Grandma to death with a bat, and when the local jock tries to get at her goodies, she impales him on a handy ski pole.

With the preliminaries out of the way, Debbie concentrates on her impression of Glenn Close in "Fatal Attraction," with Mr. Rinaldi in the role of Michael Douglas. It's a tired plot with a tired cast, and the dialogue, especially McGowan's, offers little in the way of entertainment. You'll get a feel for the movie's sensibilities when we say that one of the high points is Debbie's murder of her grandmother, because the old bat is the only person in the film more unlikable than Debbie herself. (As Debbie puts it, "It's a family thing.")

Most insulting to the audience's intelligence is the last-minute analysis of Debbie's psyche, which tries to explain why she's such a nut. To which we say: We knew going into the movie that Rose McGowan was going to play a bitch -- that's what she's good at. (That, and removing her clothing, which she fails to do in this particular outing.) Offering an excuse for her behavior, or trying to engender some sympathy towards the character, is not only beyond the point, it contradicts it. C-