High Fidelity is a rather accurate chronicle of the lives and loves of a certain type of outsized adolescent -- the pop music aficianado who never outgrows his (it's always his) obsession with trivial pursuits and prefers, to some extent, the company of great old record albums (preferably first pressings, with the proper lyric sheets in the sleeve) to actual human relationships. Cusack plays just such a creature -- Rob Gordon, owner of a dusty Chicago shop called Championship Vinyl. As a pop aesthete, Rob is forever making lists -- top five side-one-track-one songs of all time, top five songs to have played at your funeral, lists like that. As the movie opens, he's listing his top five most memorable break-ups and wondering if his most recent, Laura (a distractingly flat Iben Hjejle), belongs in that rarefied company.

Gordon's apparent preference for his music over his girlfriends is reinforced by the two co-workers with whom he spends his working days -- the quietly nerdy Dick (Todd Louiso) and the boisterous Barry (Jack Black). Over the course of the film, both Dick and Barry will finally find some form of the happiness that has eluded them, and -- am I spoiling it for you? -- Rob will reassess his priorities, revisit those top-five former lovers, and take a shot at getting Laura back.

Despite the record-geek subject matter and the vinyl-fetish cast of characters, High Fidelity really is a sweet, old-fashioned romantic comedy. Notwithstanding Rob's dalliance with a nightclub singer (Lisa Bonet) whose major liability is a fondness for Peter Frampton covers and whose strength is, well, that she resembles Lisa Bonet, the title is a double entendre, referring to both a good stereo and a good relationship -- running out of options and grasping at happiness, Rob finally settles for committed monogamy.

This story arc works largely because of Cusack's altogether winning presence, investing Hornby's book with a vibrance that it lacked on the printed page. Transplanting the story from London to Chicago turns out to be a great idea, because the low-key self-importance that a reader (this reader, anyway) attributes to the British characters becomes playful and self-effacing in the context of slightly rowdier Americans. (Maybe that's an unfair characterization, and typical of the stereotypical way Americans perceive anybody with a British accent -- basically anyone who says "bollocks" -- but I can't help it.) The presence of thoroughly appealing actors (Lili Taylor, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Tim Robbins) in basically throwaway roles doesn't hurt, either.

Beyond all the knockabout performances, the chief pleasure in High Fidelity is, I would guess, recognizing yourself or someone you care about in its pages. It treats its characters with affection, but not uncritically, and I'll readily admit that I winced a couple of times, recognizing attitudes that I hope I've grown out of. (But isn't it still true, for example, that you can tell a lot about a person by the music they choose to listen to? Isn't it?)

For his part, Frears does what he seems to be best at -- he gives his actors a good angle on strong material and then stands back. High Fidelity is the kind of film that defies auteurist criticism, in that it seems to have no directorial stamp whatsoever. Frears doesn't seem specially suited to any particular sort of material, but neither does he have a tendency to muck things up. Only the big Hollywood star vehicle (Hero, Mary Reilly) seems to confound him completely.

I won't say that I'm looking forward to the next Frears picture, but I won't avoid it, either. But whatever Cusack does next, I'm already interested.