Juliet, Naked, out August 17, is a romantic comedy as sweet as an acoustic indie rock song: Annie (Rose Byrne) is caught between a burgeoning email relationship with Tucker (Ethan Hawke), an obscure singer/songwriter who abandoned the spotlight decades ago, and a crumbling relationship with her boyfriend, Duncan (Chris O'Dowd), a Tucker superfan. The film, like the book, addresses the ways that meeting your heroes can be a letdown, and how finding romance in middle age can be a steep challenge. The 2009 novel itself, though, is captivating as a return to form for Hornby, who—just as in his classic debut, High Fidelity—captured the odd ways that music geekdom intersect with romantic dreams, and how a single song can create the kind of "mental turbulence" that changes who we care for and how much.
— Mark Athitakis
