SXSW Film Review: The Greatest Hits

We all have those moments when hearing a certain song instantly transports us back to a specific moment in time, when a sudden flash from our personal past overwhelms the present. In the romantic drama The Greatest Hits, however, this human quirk becomes pathological rather than pleasant.

Harriet (Lucy Boynton) is still haunted by the death of her boyfriend Max (David Corenswet, soon to play Superman) in a car accident two years ago. Since his passing, Harriet has developed an extreme form of this otherwise curious auditory sensation. When she hears a song from the couple’s time together, her body convulses with a flood of memories. At home, she has a timeline of their romance tacked up on the wall like it’s a police-detective investigation, and stacks of vinyl records that are filed into crates labeled Tested and Untested. Her hope is that she can find the right tune that will take her back to a moment in the past when she might have done something to prevent the accident that took Max’s life. In the meantime, she wears noise-canceling headphones in public to ward off unexpected seizures, and takes a job shelving books in a library where quiet is the golden word. For the most part, Harriet’s flashbacks to her time with Max consist of clichéd images of the couple splashing in the surf or lolling at home.

Her friend Morris (Austin Crute) encourages her to move on. It’s a thankless best-friend role made more stereotypical by Morris being a black DJ. Harriet also attends a grief-support group (moderated by Retta, better known for her comedic rather than therapeutic roles) where she meets David (Justin H. Min), who is dealing with the recent loss of his parents. There’s little obvious attraction between the actors playing Harriet and David, although that hardly stands in the way of their destiny.

Writer/director Ned Benson has never been one to shy away from imaginative concepts as seen in his previous film The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby. Presented a decade ago as three films, Him, Her, and Them, the project examined a couple’s dissolution from alternate perspectives. However, with a narrative premise that requires the suspension of disbelief, The Greatest Hits stands on less sturdy ground, even though it is irrepressibly romantic. Perhaps it’s asking too much for a time-travel romance to conform to rules of logic, but The Greatest Hits never strikes the right chord.

The Greatest Hits opens for a limited theatrical run on April 5 and debuts on Hulu on April 12.

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The Greatest Hits

Narrative Spotlight, World Premiere

March 14, Paramount

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