'The Greatest Hits' review: Time travel and rom-com, but make it cringe | W005FZE | 2024-03-15 10:08:01
Have you ever ever listened to a track and effectively time traveled? Perhaps it is a sluggish jam that takes you again to a grade faculty dance, where putting your arms round your crush's shoulders felt like probably the most thrilling factor on the planet. Perhaps it's a rock music that transports you to your first actual live performance, the odor of sweat within the press of strangers' bodies as dizzying because the music itself.& Perhaps it is a music that takes you back to that automotive and that night time and that kiss.
The Biggest Hits takes this concept literally. Following a tragic accident that took the life of her boyfriend Max (David Corenswet), Harriet (Lucy Boynton) suffers from a wierd situation, by which listening to certain sounds pitches her again into her own past for as long as the music plays. Using these jams to look up and down the timeline of their relationship, she desperately seeks the opportunity to vary his fate. If she will just convince him to not take that exact street, might she save his life?
Time travel and romance are recurring bedfellows, as seen in every thing from The Time Traveler's Wife to Doctor Who to About Time to Groundhog Day. In these narratives, the threat of making the identical mistake again and again may end up in bittersweet endings. Writer/director Ned Benson's The Biggest Hits, for higher or worse, is just not going as deep as any of these properties. As an alternative, he takes a concept that is emotionally fraught and drives it into the bottom with tedious romantic-comedy cliches.& & &
The Biggest Hits kills a compelling idea with a rote romance.&
Harriet is introduced as a heartbroken hermit, shuffling about within the ruins of her life with out her boyfriend. Their small house has grow to be a sulky shrine to his memory, full with vinyl albums of their songs, his previous chair, his dog, a photo of the couple collectively, and a self-help guide she undoubtedly hasn't opened.&
Besieged by grief, Harriet makes use of her condition as an excuse to not move on. As any track on the radio or out in the wilds of Los Angeles may ambush her right into a flashback, she's develop into remoted, shutting herself off with a pair of ever-present noise-canceling headphones. Her world has shrunken to a small clutch of family members who are extra plot units than they're characters.&
Her involved mom exists only by means of telephone calls, her aspect of the conversation unheard by the viewers. Her only pal (Austin Crute in a thankless position) is a double whammy of rom-com cliches. Not solely is he the sassy Black good friend, who doles out quips and advice, he's additionally the sassy gay good friend, who doles out salty robust love. And for good measure, he's a DJ. He's cool, so we know that by means of affiliation, she was.& (To Crute's credit, he is charming within the part, however that doesn't make it well-written.)
Likewise wasted is Parks and Recreation's Retta, who's relegated to a therapist position that provides her little to do however nod and pronounce recommendation. Meaning two Black supporting characters pull a frustratingly acquainted position, present purely to prop up the unhappy, white protagonist in her self-focused ambitions.&
It is at these episodic group remedy periods where glum Harriet meets David (Justin H. Min), a careless however sweet younger man grieving the deaths of his mother and father. No sooner is David launched that the search to save lots of Max is diluted by the beats of rom-coms, from the meet-cute to the getting-to-know-you part to a low point that would break them up, which includes Harriet coming clean about her unique situation. However the time-travel love triangle right here by no means provides pressure as a result of its development is catastrophic.&
The Biggest Hits takes falling in love as a right.&
Introduced solely in lovey-dovey flashbacks, Max isn't so much an individual as a lot as an abstraction. No matter what track Harriet listens to, she's transported to a warm memory, or a minimum of a benign one. Right here they cuddle. There they play board video games. Solely via dialogue together with her real-talking bestie is there any indication that that relationship was less than flawless. Primarily, Harriet is mourning the thought of Max fairly than a flesh-and-blood individual. So as soon as David is launched, it is clear that poor, lifeless Max is just an impediment for brand spanking new love to beat.&
Nevertheless, this blooming romance is not all that swoon-worthy. Positive, David appears pretty and has his life together. In contrast to Max, he even has household and buddies who exist and worth him! However there's no chemistry between Boynton and Min. With no sexual spark, we're left to imagine David would fall for Harriet on the idea of her allure. And whereas even in her deepest melancholy she is undeniably beautiful, she's in any other case unremarkable.&
Her DJ good friend tells us she loves music, but her tastes appear molded to impressing whomever she's with. Her supposedly edgy type feels off the rack from City Outfitters, and none of her dialogue suggests she's witty or terribly insightful. Primarily, The Biggest Hits assumes we'll fall for Harriet as a result of she's there and Boynton is gorgeous. Whereas the actress has a stunning display presence, it isn't so overwhelming that she will make up for tissue-paper thin characterizations in a sappy screenplay.&
The Biggest Hits takes a compelling idea and flings it down the path of least interest. Despite selling itself on music, the precise soundtrack is unmemorable, save for an abrupt nostalgia moment with Nelly Furtado's "I'm Like a Fowl." Somewhat than expressing character via action, Benson relies on the dialogue of supporting characters to outline his heartbroken heroine and her late boyfriend, making for a movie that feels extra like eavesdropping on a clunky dialog than experiencing love, loss, or time travel.
Far from fun, romantic, or enthralling, The Biggest Hits is clumsy, vapid, and cringe.&
The Biggest Hits was reviewed out of SXSW 2024. The film will open in theaters for restricted launch April 5, then debut on Hulu April 12.&
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