by Jeff Alan, Contributing Writer
Hulu’s newest original film is a soft romantic drama with a grief, love, and killer playlist. The Greatest Hits comes from director Ned Benson, and stars Lucy Boynton, David Corenswet, and Justin H. Min.
The film revolves around Boynton’s character, Harriet, who, after losing her boyfriend, Max (Corenswet), to a tragic car accident two years prior, has discovered that she has the ability to travel back in time and relive moments in hers and Max’s relationship when she listens to their old vinyl records. At first, she uses it to see him again, but in time, she tries to use her power to change the course of history and stop Max from dying.
Harriet’s newfound ability is not exactly a blessing, as it turns out, because it’s not just when she is listening to the records that she can go back. Any time she hears a song which she knows she heard with Max for the first time, it pulls her into those moments against her will, causing her to blackout where she is. To combat this, she resorts to wearing noise-canceling headphones everywhere just to go about her daily life. But everything changes when she meets fellow music lover, David (Min), at a grief support group, and she opens herself up to love again.
The Greatest Hits has a fantastic soundtrack and score, making it really fun to listen to — I even find some new tracks to throw on my Spotify playlist. Another great thing about the film is its cinematography. It capture Los Angeles in a unique way that actually makes it an interesting place to go visit, not shooting the touristy things, but focusing on the lesser observed parts, and the hidden gems that can make a city like that beautiful. The film also uses neon lights with a blue and pink color palette in some brief moments — that, mixed with the dreamy indie music score and soundtrack, really makes the film even more cinematic and beautiful.
While those aspects can be appealing, Greatest Hits didn’t hold my attention completely. I’m not sure why, but the story of her going back to those moments and trying to stop things from happening just didn’t work for me. There is a moment where she says no matter how much she tries to change things, it doesn’t matter and it always results in Max’s death; but later, she says that there is a way for her to change what she does in the past to affect the present, which to me doesn’t make much sense. It’s a plot hole which anyone who’s seen a time travel could easily spot. She goes back to the moment the car accident happened, and she tries to get Max to take a different route instead of the one they are on, but that is a super lazy way of trying to get something different to happen in the moment. Clearly, she couldn’t have tried EVERYTHING to get that moment to play out differently, because I can think of several different things she could have tried to meet the result she wanted. She makes an entire cork board timeline of their entire relationship, and yet she doesn’t try harder to replay that moment over and over again, Edge of Tomorrow style, to get it right. It’s lazy writing to not have this girl think of every possible contingency to get the result she wanted.
That’s sort of my biggest gripe with this film, but I understand that there would be no film if that happened. If you ask me, if your film can becomes obsolete with a small fix like that, is the film even worth making? I digress, but that’s an important factor in why I sort of tuned out a bit after the first 30 minutes or so.
But apart from that glaring error, I think The Greatest Hits sounds great in all ways, and it has some really creative cinematography. But some of the missed, basic time travel solutions are too glaring for me to overlook.
Rating: It Was Just Okay
The Greatest Hits is currently streaming on Hulu
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