Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist has all the charm and spontaneity of a high-schooler's MySpace page: a static display of typical teenage agita, perfunctory cataloging of "it" bands, shots of boozey blondes mugging for the camera. And like a MySpace page, it fails to convince you to give a shit about anyone who appears on the screen. It is a stylish, self-satisfied little flick that tries so desperately to define its protagonists by what they're not—popular, happy, loved—that the writers unwittingly neglect what satisfying, quirky characters need to be: likeable.

In this 90-minute exercise in tedium, the perpetually bewildered and hoodie-clad Nick (Micheal Cera) tries to navigate through the final days of high school with a broken heart and a bass guitar. Along the way he meets Norah (Kat Dennings)—the, sarcastic, busty brunette, who is constantly forced into the slender yet impenetrable shadows of her waify frenemies.

The insufferably awkward duo stumble through "authentic" indie scene nightspots in a rudderless quest for the typical treasures of the sensitive teen set: their favorite band's secret concert, a missing drunken best friend, and of course, a little connection. All the while the two wax and whine about their small outsider lifestyles. Their mawkish dialogue, looped over Nick's moony mixes, results in a grating din, one that overpowers any of the movie's playful, fast-paced rhythms.

After much bickering and heavy sighing, the sanctimonious specter of the Judd Apatow inspired rom-coms rears itself: the misfits finally connect, not about music but about their sanctimonious decisions to be straight edge in a scene flooded with cocktails and phonies. And so despite constant references to indie-scene meccas and obligatory mentions of The Cure and Hendrix, there is shockingly little discussion about music! There's no affable banter about any of the Pitchfork indie princes, nor is there a single memorable sermon about the emo gods of yesteryear. Cream-worthy hipster classics like Rushmore or High Fidelity understood how perfectly music can capture and amplify a person's unspoken emotions, whereas Nick and Norah bring about as much raw passion to music as an Ashlee Simpson lip synch.

While Cera surely has the chops to be this generation's John Cusack, his typical sharpness and whimsy is sadly absent from the film. If the writers had given Cera an opportunity to describe how he made his mix tapes, why he put songs together, or to express what the kooky indie rock means to him, there would be legions of teenage girls cutting and pasting his quotes on to their Facebook page. Yet Cera and Dennings' earnest performances are sabotaged by their continual eye-rolling and unrelenting snark. These hipster tadpoles have such an unearned sense of cynicism that they are a universe away from the indelible characters that inhabit the turbulent teen worlds of Cameron Crowe and John Hughes.

Your movie-ticket money is better spent downloading the superb soundtrack, which will unlock more mysteries of the anxious adolescent heart than this movie ever could.