Entertainment

Heartbroken Hipsters Attempt & Heal In Shallow Music Time Journey Film [SXSW]

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8m ago

Mar 24, 2024 / 5467 Views

Evan Walker

When is a group of dreamy, romantic, forlorn, and crestfallen moods simply that and never truly a lot of a film aside from a sequence of sequences that sum up these large melancholy emotions with achingly dreamy music? Oooh, ooh! “The Best Hits,” filMMAker Ned Benson’s newest feature-length effort, wish to discipline this one. Constructed one too many many groan-worthy romantic clichés like the connection breakup phrase, “it’s time to maneuver on,” taken to an implausibly foolish style and literal degree, Benson makes use of a flimsy neurological time journey conceit to tentatively transfer ahead and heal his hopelessly heartbroken protagonist’s coronary heart.

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“You know the way a tune can transport you again right into a second in time?” one character basically says to a different. And yeah, the misguided movie is principally that prosaic and literal-minded idea stretched out right into a slightly painful 90 minutes of the atmospheric, music-laden story of heartbreak, grief, restoration, and perhaps, simply perhaps, one other probability at love.

Overly earnest to a fault, “The Best Hits” begins with Harriet (wounded little chicken Lucy Boynton), a lovelorn lady recovering from the demise of her boyfriend (scruffy David Corenswet). She discovers she has an odd medical/neurological situation— triggered by a traumatic head harm from an accident that put her in a coma for per week—the place particular songs have the facility to move her again in time. Sure, she’s been to docs, and nothing has labored.

So, she makes use of this surreal expertise and connection between artwork and actuality to relive numerous particular moments along with her ex-boyfriend after which concocts an obsessive plan to attempt to save him. See, the cocky, hipster boyfriend (who is basically enjoying the one notice of “sizzling” and “into music”) died in a automotive accident with Harriet within the car. She believes—and so does the film—that if she will be able to discover the precise proper tune in time, she will be able to persuade her ex to both not drive on that day or a minimum of make a proper as a substitute of a left and rescue him from his supposed destiny.

Isolating from society and carrying headphones always aside from when she is answerable for the music—so it doesn’t set off an episode and throw her again in time—he rigorously constructs a iNFLexible world outlined by these guidelines, taking a job at a library the place music isn’t allowed. Two years on from her boyfriend’s demise, she attends grief counseling. Nonetheless, she doesn’t appear as if she’s remotely able to let go, regardless of the insistence of her hipster, very homosexual bestie (Austin Crute, enjoying the one notice of obnoxious sassy quipster).

However as rom-com narratives are wont to do, life appears to serve up the potential for not simply holding on and making an attempt to repair the previous when a cute new hipster boy, who additionally loves music (Justin H. Min), seems in her grief counseling classes, himself nonetheless reeling from the demise of his dad and mom.

The foundations of time journey are at all times convoluted, however they droop disbelief with their very own algorithm. Primarily based on the music and sure songs, the rules in “The Best Hits” aren’t actually convincing, and perhaps it’s as a result of the film feels contrived and cloying from minute one.

Whereas “The Best Hits” does function an excellent soundtrack—The The, 10CC, Roxy Music, and different basic songs, although a lot of them recycled too usually in motion pictures currently, diluting their energy—the film doesn’t actually make use of them to any important use aside from making every part really feel just like the equal of an overtly weepy emo Phoebe Bridgers tune, or a fist-pumping Taylor Swift jubilation. There’s little or no nuance inside.

Worse, as you would possibly count on, the film is simply slathered in wall-to-wall film sequences, and it’s simple to tune out. This music abuse looks like a group of starry-eyed music video sequences or a sequence of “Oh, I do know who I might use this tune cinematically” vignettes that usually really feel affected, hokey, and mawkish. A few of the meet-cutes are painful, too, filled with outdated references to Silverlake in L.A. as a hipster spot and seemingly ripped from the age when lazy “The O.C.” music supervisors injudiciously utilized Demise Cab For Cutie and The Postal Service on high of each scene when a sadsack, dejected and angst-ridden teenager confronted a lump of their throat heartache. A lot of the film feels ripped out of a really specific second circa 2005.

All through her journey, grappling along with her ex and fixing the previous or making an attempt to summon up the braveness to be within the current second with this new boy (who’s principally enjoying the character of, ooh, cute new boy with an excellent haircut), Harriet has to face some tough decisions ultimately. Is altering the previous a alternative value making? Or is it time to maneuver on? Cue a wistful, exuberant, or pensive pop tune, all inside the similar flavors of heartache, sorrowful dolor, or the thrilling rush of potential new love (ugh).

Suffice it to say, “The Best Hits” itself— sarcastically and fittingly usually a derogatory time period used to outline musical cliches and unimaginative musicality— by no means convincingly tranSports the viewer anyplace aside from a spot of well-worn romantic platitudes. Musicologists with any sense of ’00s pop, indie-rock, or dance-pop might discover a number of the jejune and guilelessly naive moments—akin to the cringeworthy notorious Natalie Portman second with The Shins in “Backyard State”— exhausting to tolerate. It might additionally result in different educated music heads operating for the door to search out embarrassing covers.

Music is usually a reminiscence muscle, and a particular tune can transport you again in time, “The Best Hits” says artlessly. Sure songs can pull you again into the previous, actually! Whereas Benson’s movie’s one insightful thought makes a realizing hyperlink between the effective line between love and struggling, aside from that, the movie is riddled with insipid concepts and banal observations.

Additional irritating is that the movie, stuffed with universalities about love, grief, restoration, and therapeutic, might be genuinely poignant if dealt with effectively however as a substitute is oversentimentally corny.

Image a hackneyed, inexperienced Stereogum author whose musical data is way too restricted for his submit who tried to write down a love story about loss—a haunted previous!— and studying to open their coronary heart once more after years of retaining it shut. Possibly that offers you all “The Best Hits” image you want. Benson delivered a equally toned however extra affecting heartbreak story within the two-part “The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby” in 2014. However ten years later, as his first follow-up in all that point, “The Best Hits” is approach worse than only a sophomore hunch, extra precisely, a long-the-works opus that ought to have simply stayed within the vaults. [D+]