(2000) The top ten movies, adapted from contemporary novels, which I've both read and seen - To Kill a Mockingbird, Fahrenheit 451, Slaughterhouse Five, The Cider House Rules, Catch 22, The World According to Garp, Sophie's Choice, The French Lieutenant's Woman, Lolita (both versions), Lord of the Rings - doesn't include director Stephen Frears's very good adaptation (screenplay by D.V. DeVincentis, Steve Pink, John Cusack, and Scott Rosenberg) of Nick Hornby's novel. Nevertheless, it would make the top 20.

The setting of Hornby's fiction has shifted from mid-'90s London to 2000 Chicago; John Cusack's character, the mid-30s owner of Championship Vinyl (an out-of-the-way vintage-record store), Rob's last name has been changed from Fleming to Gordon.

"What came first, the music or the misery?" Frequently addressing the audience in asides, Rob, whose girlfriend Laura (Iben Hjejle) has just left him for lack of ambition ("You're the same person you used to be…. You haven't changed so much as a pair of socks since I've known you"), wonders aloud if kids' listening to thousands of songs of heartbreak hasn't been a more destructive influence than all the images of violence they've seen: "Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?"

Before the split the couple had met several years earlier when Rob was a DJ at the Double Door before Laura took a position with a prestigious law firm; he made her a compilation tape of songs.

Along with reorganizing his record collection in his apartment "autobiographically," he mentally rehashes (through flashbacks) the five most-rending breakups of his life (a pantheon to which he initially says Laura does not belong), beginning with the first at 14 Alison Ashmore (which lasted six hours over three days), followed by Penny Hardwick (assaults on her well-defended breasts: "Sometimes I got so bored of trying to touch her breast that I would try to touch her between her legs. It was like trying to borrow a dollar, getting turned down, and asking for 50 grand instead") in high school, Jackie Alden (unlike the novel, the movie largely ignores this affair), Charlie Nicholson (out of his league but whom he "never got over," before flunking out as a sophomore in college), and Sarah Kendrew (both meeting after getting dumped, frightened of being left alone for the rest of their lives, and then she dumped him).

At the record store Rob employs the "musical moron twins": Barry (Jack Black), who's corpulent and arrogant and offensive to customers and everyone else, and meek, balding, skinny Dick (Todd Louiso). After attending a club with Barry and Dick where Rob hears the beautiful and talented Marie De Salle (Lisa Bonet) sing, his heart soars off toward yet another fantasy, with whom he discovers that what matters is "what you like, not what you are like." She teaches him that sex is a basic human right.

However, Rob remains ragingly conflicted (Is the sex better with him?) over Laura's having thrown him over for Ian "Ray" Raymond (Tim Robbins), news Liz (Joan Cusack), a sympathetic mutual friend, delivers. Later Liz, presumably having heard more about the relationship from Laura - his affair while she was pregnant followed by her getting an abortion, his borrowing and not repaying $4,000 and then telling her he was unhappy with their living together - accuses Rob of being an "asshole." But Rob explains to us the context and extenuating circumstances.

Questioning if he's "doomed to be rejected" and his penchant for jumping from one girl to another ("my guts have shit for brains"), he begins a quest of contacting each of the four principal heartbreakers from his past (leaving out Jackie, whom Laura has replaced): Allison's mother informs him that Allison married her first (not having known of Rob) boyfriend Kevin Bannister (thus fate/destiny, beyond his control - giving Rob an opportunity of having an imaginary conversation with Bruce Springsteen); Penny (Joelle Carter), who reminds him that he dropped her (had he just been more patient, he might have been the one and only); Sarah (Lili Taylor), for whom he has no hard feelings (but considers her availability: "screw the person who rejected you"); and finally Charlie (Catherine Zeta-Jones), who asks if he's "in or out?"

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