On Friday, April 12, ‘The Greatest Hits’ hit Hulu after a limited theatrical release. ‘The Greatest Hits’ isn’t your average romance movie as its sci-fi elements help it stand out amongst other 2024 romance releases.
The film opens in the main character Harriet’s house. She’s looking at a wall filled with photos, cards and gifts. Viewers can see boxes of records — some marked ‘tested’ and others ‘untested’. Harriet puts on a specific song then sits down and is transported to a memory of her and her boyfriend Max getting into a car accident. She then wakes up the next morning and goes about her day. This is when we see her wear earplugs and headphones while driving to work. She listens to a playlist called ‘SAFE HAPPY,’ which is difficult to find a reason for until the movie is over.
She goes through her day and then ends up at a grief support group where the lady who runs it mentions seizures and medications. While driving home, Harriet accidentally rear-ends someone. When she gets out of her car, she hears another song that pulls her into a memory of her and Max at a Halloween party. On the outside though, it looks like she passed out on the street. She goes to meet her friend Morris immediately after. It’s at this point that viewers begin to understand what is truly going on.
Harriet has what she calls “Max moments.” This is when she hears a song that she and Max listened to and they pull her back to when they first heard it. Because of this, she has been able to find “safe songs,” but wears headphones everywhere out of precaution. Harriet believes that if she can find the song played when Max was buying a chair for their house, she’ll be able to stop him from dying. That’s where the ‘tested’ and ‘untested’ records come into play.
Harriet also knows what songs bring her to what memory, and the audience sees throughout the movie that she picks specific songs to be brought back to those moments in time.
On the second anniversary of the accident, a new person comes into the grief support group. His name is David, and he accidentally interrupts Harriet by knocking over a bunch of chairs.
Harriet invites him to come by the record store where Morris will be DJing. When he arrives, they start looking through the records together trying to find the one playing in the store. David ends up finding it they agree to share it. This scene was so cute. Watching two awkward and broken people trying to flirt with each other will never get old. Harriet grapples with the fact that she still loves and wants to save Max, but she can’t fight that she’s interested in David. Even though she messes up a few times it seems that David can see and understand the grief and that she truly wants to try to work things out with him.
He takes her on a date to a silent disco, so she’s not the only one wearing headphones. After they go to David’s parent’s shop, Harriet realizes that she’s been there before — the day of Max’s accident. She finds the record and proves her time travel abilities to David. In the memory, it is revealed that they also saw each other the day she was in his family’s store.
The end of the movie isn’t necessarily happily ever after. It does, however, show that time heals wounds and that you can meet people more than once in your life. I’m not the biggest music nerd, but with music being one of the main focuses of the movie, I think they did stellar in this department.
The other main focus of this movie is grief and how we handle it. It’s emotional but also uplifting because we watch Harriett go on her journey of coming to terms with loss and coming out the other side okay.
Rating: 5/5 stars