2024's Most Romantic Time-Travel Movie Just Landed on Hulu

Summary

• A new romantic fantasy film is available for streaming on Hulu.
• It is a heartwarming drama about how music helps you cope with the grief of losing a loved one.
• The film was enthusiastically received by audiences, but critics gave it lukewarm reviews for being clichéd.

Music is life. Sometimes too literally, because a single track can change our priorities and views forever, becoming a milestone in our lives, associated with one or another impactful moment or person. A single song can become a genuine time machine, capable of giving us warm nostalgic feelings and transporting us back to those exact past moments. And when it comes to the loss of loved ones, music can sometimes commemorate them better than any material object.

This is the idea behind this new romantic movie, in which music becomes not only a healing tool to overcome the grief of loss, but also a literal modus operandi of existence that makes its protagonist relive moments from the past over and over again. Unfortunately, it's the clichéd nature that hasn't earned this movie any unambiguously high scores, but that doesn't make it any less of a worthy option to watch, considering it was recently added to Hulu for streaming.

What Is This New Romantic Fantasy Movie About?

We're talking about the new time-travel romantic drama The Greatest Hits, directed and written by Ned Benson, which debuted at South by Southwest on March 14, 2024, received a limited theatrical release on April 5, and has been available for streaming on Hulu since April 12.

The story follows Harriet (Lucy Boynton), a young woman who two years ago was involved in a car accident with her boyfriend Max (David Corenswet), in which he was killed. As a result of the head injury, Harriet began to have seizures triggered by any songs that involve memories of Max. Only, from Harriet's point of view, these aren't just seizures, but literal time shifts: as long as a song lasts, so does she relive Max's memories. The protagonist is convinced that if she can find the right track, she will be able to change the past and bring back her dead boyfriend.

But that's exactly what becomes the big question: does she need to change what's already happened, or is it time to move on, as her worried friend Morris (Austin Crute) urges her to do? However, everything changes when Harriet meets David (Justin H. Min) at a grief counseling session. Of course, their dynamic is rocky at first, as Harriet is afraid of experiencing the same pain she did after Max's death by getting close to a new person.

What Are Critics and Audiences Saying about the Film?

Many who have seen this new romantic fantasy film have appreciated the attention paid to music and its healing properties. Indeed, each time Harriet is confronted with painful moments from the past that resurface while she is listening to music, she gradually comes to accept the loss and the pain caused by it, accepts it as a fact, and eventually manages to overcome her trauma by learning to live in the present instead of the past.

In addition to the heartwarming cinematography and beautiful music, this film is incredibly endearing, hopeful and heartbreaking at the same time, because the journey to overcome grief is not easy.

Thanks to all these aspects, audiences loved the film: on Rotten Tomatoes, audiences gave the film a solid 71%, while critics gave it only 40%. The latter noted that the plot is incredibly reminiscent of 2022's Press Play and the script is rather predictable. However, if you are looking for something healing and with an optimistic outlook on life, The Greatest Hits is the best option.