Movie Review: Hurry Up Tomorrow

 

Michael's Movie Grade: F

All style and no substance. 

This movie stars the pop singer The Weekend (who is also a co-writer) as himself and much of the film comes off as a complete ego trip. In one scene he is told that he is like a superhero to his fans and in another a different character talks about how many of his fans don't understand how deep his songs really are. It is amazing that a film which is very obviously a pure vanity project found its way to the big screen. Meanwhile the actual song performances come off as glorified music videos that seem to go on forever. These essentially music video scenes throw so many bizarre visuals at us that it simply becomes overwhelming. These visuals have no real meaning to them and add nothing to the film's story or characters. They are simply there to make this film appear to be deeply artistic without actually having any real artistic merit. The same can be said for a dream sequence later in the movie. This sequence tries to trick audiences into thinking they are something artistic while instead being completely shallow and pointless. 

The Weekend himself is not that great of an actor. This becomes all the more obvious when you compare him to Jenna Ortega's performance (how does such a talented actress find herself in such bad movies (with a few exceptions)). However not even a talented actress can make her character even remotely interesting. Every character in this film is very bland and completely unlikable. Because of this it is hard to care about anything that happens. 

The problem is that the storyline of a pop singer having a one-night stand with a young woman that becomes something much more dangerous could have made for a fun little B movie. If the filmmakers didn't take the story so seriously and played it with a bit of tongue and cheek, I could see this being a fun little movie. However, with a self-serious script, unlikable characters and pretentious visuals, there is not one second of enjoyment to be minded out of this film. The disappointment in this film only increases when you realize that the director, Trey Edard Shults has previously proven himself to be a strong filmmaker with such movies as Waves (2019). Hopefully this is just one miss and that the filmmaker gets himself back on track with his next film.