Movie Review: 'The Idea of You' Starring Anne Hathaway

The Idea of You (2024)

Directed by Michael Showalter

Written by Michael Showalter, Jennifer Westfeldt

Starring Anne Hathaway, Nicholas Galitzine

Release Date May 2nd, 2024

Published May 7th, 2024

With this many talented people involved, I am shocked at how boring and basic The Idea of You turned out. Michael Showalter has proven to be an adept and quirky filmmaker. His previous films have an adventurous yet warm romantic humor. Jennifer Westfeldt, returning to screenwriting for the first time since her breakout screenplay Kissing Jessica Stein, also promises something warm, funny and quirky. So how did we arrive at this product placement laden, highly predictable, and endlessly dull, dud of a rom-com? And how did they manage to fumble the radiant talent of Anne Hathaway?

The Idea of You, a desperately forgettable title, stars Anne Hathaway as Solene, a 40 year old divorced mom. She's an artist and she runs a successful art gallery. As we meet Solene, she's bundling her teenage daughter, Izzy (Ella Rubin), and her two best friends, off to Coachella with Izzy's uber-rich daddy who has sprung for a big backstage package, one that will allow her to meet her favorite boy band. Well, they used to be her favorite boy band but, as she says, they are so 7th grade, she doesn't listen to them anymore. The boy band, known as August Moon, is headed up by Hayes Campbell, the Harry Styles of the group, played by Nicholas Galitzine.

Circumstances conspire to have Solene have to take the kids to Coachella where she will end up backstage. In a comic misunderstanding, Solene ends up in Hayes Campbell's trailer, thinking it's the backstage restroom. Hayes is immediately smitten with Solene but she doesn't see it. After a brief exchange about art and her art gallery, they part ways. Later, Hayes shows up at Solene's gallery and buys all of the art as a ruse to spend time with Solene. She goes for this, after initially questioning his dedication to art, and the two end up back at her house sharing a moment over her piano.

Once Solene's daughter is sent off to a summer camp of some sort, Solene takes up Hayes' offer to fly to New York to hook up and for a time, the pair enjoy hooking up. Naturally, we have roadblocks set up in Solene and Hayes' age gap, 16 years I think it is, and in the reaction of Solene's daughter to her mom dating her former favorite boy band guy, but the biggest obstacle is the predictable nature of romantic comedy structure. The typical beats of a rom-com are inescapable at this point, intractable. The only way to work around the genre strictures is to elevate the familiar with great performance and undeniable chemistry.

Sadly, The Idea of You is lacking in elevating qualities. For all of Anne Hathaway's appealing qualities, she can't force a chemistry with Nicholas Galitzine and it's just not there. The two have a friendly back and forth but there is a distinct lack of smolder. It's very pretty to look at two attractive people being intimate but in this movie, it's like watching two people acting and not two lovers excitedly exploring their mutual attraction. Hathaway's attempts at selling awkwardness and Galitzine's blank stare combine to create barely a simmer, let alone a smolder.

Michael Showalter is a smart director who has brought a lovely warm aesthetic to his previous comedies that is lacking in The Idea of You. Instead, the look of the movie muddy and muted. For a movie about art and artists, the film is bland and colorless. This matches the tone of the film which also falls on the bland side of things. None of the characters stand out beyond being archetypes of older woman and younger man, non-famous person and famous person. There is simply nothing special about these characters as individuals and without a sparky chemistry, the film has little to nothing to fall back on.

I briefly mentioned product placement and it's clumsy and needless. First is basically an ad for going to Coachella. The first act is a love letter to the festival. Then, later in the movie, there is a brief ad for Carmax. Carmax, it's like new. The brief ad for Carmax, not so subtly slipped into the dialogue, would be less jarring if it weren't immediately following Solene's emotional break up with Hayes. It's jarring and clumsy and it exists only so that the movie can mention Carmax and, I imagine, cash a healthy check that helped pay for a small portion of the movie. I realize that many of you don't care or are even in support of movies finding new ways to find revenue, but I will never find this kind of shameless, in-movie, commercial anything less than tacky and off-putting.

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