"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.

“Help Me”

Joni Mitchell wrote and recorded this song for her album Court and Spark, but she had to switch from her regular band to make the song sound exactly the way she wanted. "I had attempted to play my music with rock & roll players," she told Rolling Stone. "They’d laugh, 'Awww, isn't that cute? She's trying to teach us how to play.'" Mitchell switched to a jazz band, Tom Scott’s L.A. Express, and scored the biggest hit of her career in the process.