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As an adult male in his late 20′s, who is in a happy, long-term relationship, the way to spend a Tuesday evening is probably not watching a romantic comedy, alone, while eating a deep-fried cheeseburger and drinking Boddington’s (the greatest beer ever).

 And yet, here I am. I feel I may be developing a theme, called “Your Late 20′s: How They Might Surprise You.”

 Chalk it up to an affinity for Michael Cera, who has come to embody the awkwardly intelligent teenager (so I have a bit of fellow-feeling towards him), and a desire to not let any friends/loved ones watch Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist before determining if it’s any good. I’m protective that way. Call me a Netflix Gatekeeper.

 Like most bright, mildly cynical adults, I don’t think too highly of romantic comedies. Let’s face it: they’re stupid. Even worse: they’re insulting.

They’ve developed an irritating set of tropes where two attractive people fall in love (either immediately, or else after hating each other for a brief span of time), but have to combat a series of ridiculously contrived obstacles just to be with each other.

And then the lousy message sent to the audience is, “These people deserve to be together, even though they engage in downright retarded behavior when two minutes of honest conversation would’ve solved a lot of their problems.”

These movies encourage the belief that behaving stupidly inevitably leads to romantic bliss. That’s…not a good message. But in a sweet and intelligent way, Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist proves that these tropes can be acceptable, provided they involve teenagers.

The reason romantic comedies seem painfully stupid is that they happen to adults – people who should know better. Adults should be smart enough to deal with the stupid roadblocks that momentarily keep two charismatic, attractive people from each other – and if they can’t, then they never deserved that reward in the first place.

But being a teenager means everything feels Terribly Important. When you’re a teenager, all these horrible hormonal emotions you’re going through seem absolutely singular to your own experience. NOBODY knows what you’re going through. Those obstacles really do feel like Big Roadblocks to happiness.

So I enjoyed watching Michael Cera and Kat Dennings, two articulate but believable teenagers, as they fumbled and passive-aggressively talked their way into a romance with each other (and also into a startlingly believable – and yes, tasteful – sorta-sex scene).

Because for them, every emotion they experience really is Do-Or-Die – something a lot of adults would kill to feel again…provided they could feel it without the exhausting intensity a teenager has to deal with.

The only “adult” romantic comedy I can think of is High Fidelity – because its lead is a guy who still thinks in romantic-comedy clichés and has to realize it’s Not Really Like That if he’s to actually grow as a person.

So when he tells his long-suffering girlfriend that he wants to marry her because he’s “tired of the fantasy,” and wants to think about something else for a change, it’s a turning point towards something better, more realistically important in the long run.

Don’t get me wrong. I still have fond memories of the ridiculous romantic follies of my youth. But that’s just it – that’s shit I cared about when I was 18. I’ve moved on – like people should. To more important things.

To see Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson acting like teenagers is just embarrassing. Those movies come out and I wonder, “Is something wrong, y’know, mentally, with these two characters?”

But, watching two teens going through those motions is sweet and charming. So Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist is a lovely movie for a select set: it’s a warm, if bittersweet, reminder to adults, of a time these feelings were the be-all and end-all of their worlds.

And it reassures teenagers that they’re not the lonely romantics they fear they might be.