"Slight" is too strong a word to apply to this teen spin on Martin Scorsese's After Hours. Peter Sollett, a director with indie cred thanks to his 2002 Raising Victor Vargas debut, takes us on an odyssey into Manhattan's night world that toddles when you ache for it to toot. The script, by Lorene Scafaria, is Afterschool Special 101: Nick (Michael Cera), an alt-rock bassist, makes mixtapes for mean girl Tris (Alexis Dziena), who dumps him. After a gig with his two gay bandmates, Nick meets and falls for Nora (Kat Dennings), who likes his tapes and his yellow Yugo. They drive around the five boroughs looking for her drunk girlfriend (a funny Ari Graynor) and the club where Where's Fluffy are playing a secret concert. I'm yawning just writing this. The compensations are Cera and Dennings, both charmers with a wry way around a comic line. Sollett, hoping for a Before Sunrise/Before Sunset vibe, sadly settles for a soggy aftertaste.

“Everyday People”

"Everyday People" managed to trailblaze in two different ways -- it was one of the first pop hits to deal with the subject of racial harmony, and it utilized Larry Graham's "slap" technique on the bass guitar, which would soon be copied by countless other bassists. Graham once said about his pulsating style, "I'd never done that before … that's where the freedom of creativity came in for the band, that we'd be allowed to do that." In 1978, the song's line "Different strokes for different folks" would be borrowed for the title of the hit television show Diff'rent Strokes.