PLOT: A depressed superstar (Abel “the Weeknd” Tesfaye) has a surreal, dangerous encounter with an obsessed fan (Jenna Ortega).
REVIEW: I’ll give Able “the Weeknd” Tesfaye this – he seems immune to criticism. After being pilloried by the press for his failed HBO series, The Idol, he’s doubled down on his attempts to break into acting. Hurry Up Tomorrow might be one of the most extreme acts of self-aggrandizement I’ve ever seen. In the movie, not only does he play a version of himself, but he’s also portrayed as perhaps the world’s most successful singer, whose work inspires devotion from fans. His voice and lyrics are so utterly powerful that, at one point, the beauty of one of his songs manages to defuse a potentially deadly confrontation. It’s the vanity project of all vanity projects, and indeed, he’s risking ridicule by making this his starring debut in a major film.
There seem to be two potential audiences for this movie—devoted fans of The Weeknd and the singer himself. No one else, not even casual fans, needs to see this unless they like watching train wrecks. But even his fans might find this a chore to sit through, with it a thinly plotted rehash of far better films (Misery, Play Misty for Me, A Star is Born). It’s a disappointing follow-up to Waves (one of the rare films I’ve ever given a 10/10 to) for director Trey Edward Shults, who seemed to be on the verge of a significant breakthrough between that and It Comes at Night. This is, at best, a feature-length collection of videos for The Weeknd’s new album (which carries the same title), and not a standalone project.
One wonders what attracted rising stars Jenna Ortega and Barry Keoghan to this misbegotten film beyond Tesfaye’s undeniable charisma. This review isn’t meant to knock his talents, as he has written some terrific songs. But he’s not a compelling enough figure to carry a movie that only seems concerned with paying tribute to his tortured genius. How do we know he’s tortured? Because Tesfaye cries so often in the movie that I lost count after about a dozen scenes where tears slowly well up in his eyes and slowly pour down his face in moments that are meant to be powerful.
In the film, Tesfaye is struggling with a mental problem that’s led to him losing his singing voice. It seems related to a bad breakup (with Riley Keough contributing a cameo via pics on an iPhone and a few voicemails). The copious amounts of drinking and all the drugs he does with his BFF/manager, Lee (Barry Keoghan), probably aren’t helping matters… but I digress. He meets up with a devoted fan, Jenna Ortega’s Anima, and they have a wild, passionate evening. But he gets more than he bargained for when he tries to blow her off the next morning.
Jenna Ortega at least seems to be having fun as the troubled Anima, who’s introduced setting her home on fire, with her seeming like a pyromaniac who, inexplicably, always seems to have access to a gas can, but doesn’t seem to realize vapours are also flammable. The moment everyone’s going to be talking about – if anyone sees the movie that is – is when Ortega dances along with “Blinding Lights” and offers an insightful deep dive into the song that was no doubt penned by Tesfaye himself, with him also co-authoring the slim screenplay.
Shults and The Weeknd seemingly have no interest in making this into a genre film, meaning that even if it flirts with thriller territory, it never has any sense of tension. There are a lot of surreal scenes, such as one when the ever-weepy Weeknd meets his younger self in a dream. It’s all quite tedious, with Shults dressing the whole thing up in his shifting aspect ratios, and a camera that’s always on the verge of another 360-degree rotation. The craft is punishing more than it is enthralling.
Again, though, one has to give The Weeknd credit for his audacity. I never thought that Hurry Up Tomorrow would end up being a 21st-century version of the kinds of video albums movie stars turned singers regularly dropped during the eighties (check out this one for Don Johnson’s Heartbeat, and this one for Bruce Willis’s The Return of Bruno). Hurry Up Tomorrow will likely have all the staying power those did – meaning it’ll quickly be forgotten by all except the most devoted connoisseur of bad cinema. This one hurt.
