Market Square Cinemas, 2160 Sycamore Road, will revisit the 2000 classic “High Fidelity” as part of its re-run film festival this Friday. The 110-minute satire on one man’s relationship history is chock-full of memorable one-liners and could very well be the last rewarding performance we’ll see from John Cusack.

Rob Gordon (Cusack) is the protagonist and narrator of this film, and he takes us through his five most painful, failed romantic relationships one by one.

Rob is in some ways like a boy who never grew up. He owns a record store in Chicago where he and his assistants Dick (Todd Louiso) and Barry (Jack Black) are obsessed with knowing everything about pop music. He and his co-workers ponder dilemmas such as how to correctly appreciate the works of Stevie Wonder (“Is it in fact unfair to criticize a formerly great artist for his latter day sins?”) as well as their vengeance for preserving the integrity of music (“The making of a compilation tape is a very subtle art. You’re using someone’s poetry to express how you feel”). Rob constantly makes top five great and worst lists of bands, songs and even girlfriends.

After his last, most serious girlfriend walks out the door, Rob vows she couldn’t possibly hurt him like his “top five” breakups did. And so he decides to revisit the girls who delivered “humiliation and heartbreak” and learn if he was really over them.

Rob starts out with a jilted, sulking and somewhat neurotic approach to reviewing his romantic life, but throughout the movie this turns into more of an insightful reflection on romance in general. When he looks at the individual differences in each of his relationships – the young first love, the self-absorbed girl who broke his heart, the codependent girlfriend whom he used to numb his pain – he realizes how much his relationships were actually about growing up.

The most intriguing part of this movie are the metaphors and parallels Rob makes between music and love, life and relationships. Certain lines have stuck with us long after the movie left theatres, and the last scene includes this monologue by Rob that pretty much captures the film’s essence: “The making of a great compilation tape, like breaking up, is hard to do and takes ages longer than it might seem. I’ve started to make a tape, for Laura. Full of stuff that would make her happy. For the first time I can sort of see how that is done.”