Michael Cera was just terrific in Arrested Development and it wasn't because he's a skilled actor - it is because he IS not Michael Cera: boy actor, he IS George Michael: awkward hipster. While this could be sort of endearing it loses its initial charm when he starts getting big roles and he's the same indie rock awkward relative loving, crappy band playing in, d-bag that I wouldn't want to be around in real life. And boy oh boy does the script for his newest allow, nay, insist on him being more pretentious and smug than ever before.
Skimpy on premise, Nick and Norah's is a "love" story about two teenagers who are inept with relationships and fall in "love" with each other after a night of liking and loathing each other culminating in a tape recorded orgasm in Electric Ladyland Studios and a (potential) promise of eternal love once the two of them go to the most fittingly stereotypical colleges the shoddy author of this book turned abomination could think of (Emerson and Brown - can you say cliche?)
With Mark Mothersbaugh Devo'ing up the soundtrack you know it's filled with songs that should make it on the radio but never will - and so really what you should do it go buy the soundtrack, use a few of the songs to make a mix for a girl/boy you have absolutely no chance with, give it to them, be rejected (possibly after a thank you make out session), and then not only did you get the only benefit of the movie aurally but you also got to live it! Hooray for real life. If a movie is going to imitate the simplicity of a sturdy storyline in place of good acting, film making, or screenwriting (such as in "Juno") it needs to have a storyline as worthwhile as "Juno" and neither Nick nor Norah made me want to do anything other than scream. Although Juno the character made me want to do that now and then she also managed to make me smile once or twice.
So buy the soundtrack, or bootleg it, since I'm pretty sure that's what fancy-pants Nick would have done himself.
Oh, and PS to Jay Baruchel, you suck, you always have.