Have you ever been driving along in your car while listening to a radio station or a Spotify playlist on shuffle when a song comes on that vividly reminds you of someone or something from your past? Perhaps it’s an emotional memory full of happiness or sadness or a flashback to the moment you met someone special.
In “The Greatest Hits,” such an instance isn’t fleeing for Harriet (Lucy Boynton). Instead, it’s transporting — literally. When she hears a song today that she heard in the past with her late boyfriend Max (David Corenswet), she’s pulled back through time to that moment. At home, in the evening, she’ll purposely play one of those songs on her turntable, hoping that by reverting to the before time she can somehow save Max from dying in a car accident.
Harriet’s problem is that when she leaves her apartment, that teleportation can be triggered just by hearing one of those songs on someone else’s car radio or a speaker at Starbucks. You can understand how such an interruption in your otherwise routine day could be a problem, which explains why Harriet wears big, noise-canceling headphones wherever she goes.
Well, almost wherever. She doesn’t wear them to the grief group she attends, where she meets a nice guy named David (Justin H. Min), with whom she starts a relationship, though Harriet remains guarded in case she’s forced backward into the time rip again. She’s not open with David about her situation, having shared it only with her obligatory Black gay friend, Morris (Austin Crute). But as the new relationship grows, can she finally put the past behind her?
If all of that sounds to you like “The Greatest Hits” is a movie full of clichés, I’m happy to report that writer/director Ned Benson elevates it above the ranks of the standard romcom to offer an interesting perspective on navigating grief and the not-uncommon desire to change history.
I do have to note one technical error, though. Harriet has a vintage car with an in-dash AM radio, complete with buttons you could set for your favorite stations. But Harriet lives in modern-day Los Angeles, and when she gets in the car and pushes those buttons, she only lands on music stations that play current or slightly recent music. On AM radio in this decade? Nope! Not in LA or anywhere else in America. They don’t exist. Now, if she was dialing around for some extremist conservative talk radio loudmouths, she’d have loads of options, but there’s no such thing as a contemporary AM music station anymore. Unless her car radio was as magical as her song-induced time travel.
“The Greatest Hits” doesn’t deserve to have the word “great” in its title, but buoyed by Benson’s script and Boynton’s performance, it qualifies as a pleasant way to pass 94 minutes. I give it a 6.5 out of 10.
Now streaming on Hulu.