‘High Fidelity’ Goes High Def with Zoe Kravitz

We live in a culture where original ideas seem increasingly rare in entertainment. Every other box office blockbuster is a remake or a reboot or a sequel of something plenty of us first encountered in the 80s, 90s, or 2000s. Occasionally these nostalgic strolls down memory lane are enjoyable, but often they just feel like unnecessary retreads or obvious money-grabs. The general premise falls flat in a contemporary setting, the plot feels outdated or old-fashioned, the assumptions about gender or race or nationality are embarrassingly quaint. So imagine my surprise when Hulu’s original series High Fidelity managed to evade all of those traps. Sure, it may just be that Generation X is currently a bit in vogue here in the End Times. Millennials are looking at us with a wary appreciation:  we’re the folks who not only are also being reluctantly governed by the Boomers, but somehow survived being raised by them. If we all seem a bit snide and smug, it’s because we’ve been considering getting “We Told You So” tattooed somewhere not-too-subtle for at least a decade. Seriously, though, this reimagining of the 2000 film starring John Cusack (and based on the Nick Hornby novel of the same name) somehow transcends many of the clichés that feel so inevitable when looting the turn of the century for material.

This time around, genetic lottery winner Zoe Kravitz stars as the snobby, navel-gazing record store owner Rob (short for “Robyn”), and instead of Chicago, her shop Championship Viny…