THE GREATEST HITS - Mark Reviews Movies

The Greatest Hits, Searchlight Pictures

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Review by Mark Dujsik | April 11, 2024

There's nothing inherently wrong with a character in a story bluntly stating its theme, but when that moment arrives in The Greatest Hits, it elicits a deep, skeptical groan. Here's a story about a woman who travels back in time when she listens to certain songs. The movie's entire premise literalizes a clichéd metaphor, and then, writer/director Ned Benson has the gall to have the woman's potential love interest point out that listening to music can make you feel as if you're going back to a particular moment in time. One level of on-the-nose execution is enough, thank you very much.

In fact, Benson's entire plot is a level or two too many. It follows Harriet (Lucy Boynton), whose boyfriend Max (David Corenswet) died in a car accident two years prior that also resulted in a traumatic brain injury and a coma for her. For some reason, the combination of all these events led to Harriet's music-based time-traveling ability. Essentially, if she hears a song that she and Max listened to together, her conscious is transported back in time to the first moment they heard that song as a couple.

It's a good thing Benson's screenplay throws us right into this premise (which isn't original, unless one ignores the existence of a movie called Press Play that had pretty much the same idea, was released less than two years ago, and did it a bit better than this one), or else, the screenplay would have a lot of explaining to do. There's no explanation here, which is fine. There's almost no reason for this story to have this gimmick, either, except that it is an easy-to-sell gimmick. That's much less than fine.

The main issue is that the movie divides itself in two. One part is about how Harriet has spent the past two years listening to records, going in back in time, and trying to stop Max from dying. Nothing has worked so far, and to make matters worse, she can slip out of the present and into the past if she hears one of the couple's shared songs at any time and anywhere. This is highly inconvenient for her, since it could mean reliving the accident, but quite convenient for us, since it means that Harriet might randomly have a time-traveling spell that gives us some more information about her relationship with Max.

Strangely, there's not much to it. They spend time together, laughing and spending some relaxing times together and frolicking in the ocean in their underwear. It's up to an opening montage of Harriet looking occasionally doubtful and a conversation with her best friend Morris (Austin Crute) to tells us that maybe Harriet wasn't entirely happy in or certain about the romance. The suggestion that this superficially ideal-looking relationship might not have been anything like that is far more interesting than, well, the superficial romance that actually exists here.

Here's the thing: The story isn't fully about this. No, it also introduces a new, potential romantic partner for Harriet in David (Justin H. Min) at a grief support group (His parents died recently, but there's no gimmick to his mourning, leading to the one genuine moment in the whole movie, thanks to Min's grounded performance). This relationship is much more compelling, but then again, anything beyond the other romance, which often looks like a commercial for something, would be better.

These two actually talk and sometimes talk about things of some significance, too. That's the case, at least, whenever Harriet isn't evading the topic of traveling through time to save her dead boyfriend or actively trying to convince David that his metaphor is literally true in her case.

Where does that leave the time-travel gimmick, though? Well, it's there, apparently, to make Harriet's grief and guilt tangible, which isn't necessary in general and certainly isn't required with an actress like Boynton, who's severely underused here. Most of her dialogue amounts to explaining time travel, saying how sad and conflicted Harriet is, and, in the past, trying to convince Max he needs to do something or other different in his life, without really pointing out to him what the stakes of that are.

The dichotomy between the two plots is really one of indecision. Benson wants to do both but simply coasts on the premise of the time-travel side, while simultaneously using it as a convoluted complication for the present-day romance. The narrative is split in two and can't determine which half is more important one in The Greatest Hits. As a result, neither is explored in any meaningful or clever way, meaning that both feel slight and slighted by the presence of the other.

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