"Hurry up tomorrow" Abel, please, stick to music.

I feel slightly embarrassed for believing that "Hurry Up Tomorrow" had any chance of being a good movie. Despite how much I appreciate The Weeknd's music, and even more so the album of the same name released a couple of months ago, it's clear that Abel Tesfaye isn't exactly a cinematic mastermind, something we knew a couple of years ago with the release of The Idol, directed by the infamous Sam Levinson. However, the presence of Jenna Ortega and Barry Keoghan as part of the cast, along with Trey Edward Shults (who some of you may remember for the beautiful 2019 film "Waves"), only gave us a glimmer of hope regarding the slim possibility of a decent film as a result, especially since Abel had been saying for a while that Hurry Up Tomorrow (The Album) would be the closing of his career (at least under the name The Weeknd), and this could adapt several very interesting ideas in a hypothetical film adaptation.

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However, the result can't even be classified as mediocre, and we're looking at a film that boasts an attractive aesthetic, a couple of interesting ideas, but a bunch of simply unbearable concepts.

As if it were a sort of homage to Stephen King's Misery, "Hurry Up Tomorrow" tells the story of a fictional version of Abel himself who, after a concert where his voice is destroyed, ends up in the clutches of a fan obsessed with him.

Although this premise may sound like an exaggerated simplification, the deeper thematic elements of the film seem to be purely ornamental. Valuable minutes are wasted on "subplots" that never go anywhere and that appear complex and ambiguous but are actually lazy and pretentious.

Loosely inspired by a real-life experience the Canadian singer had at a Los Angeles concert (something that, incidentally, drastically altered the soul of the original album), Hurry Up Tomorrow attempts to immerse us in his more human side, attempting to spark a conversation about the way his most recognized songs have become anthems of modern society while their messages are ignored. This idea is developed in the least subtle way possible, through a ridiculous conversation where Ani (played by Jenna Ortega) exposes them in the most unnatural way possible, a testament to the quality of the script.

The music is good and at its best works as a sort of extended music video, but I honestly don't feel it's worth it.

Hurry Up Tomorrow insists upon itself, and perhaps would have worked better if there were more minds behind the project.

Score taken from my Letterboxd account.