Hurry Up Tomorrow Parent Guide

International pop superstardom notwithstanding, Abel “The Weeknd” Tesfaye (played by himself) is in a bad way. Things have ended exceptionally poorly with his last girlfriend, and no amount of cocaine or overt emotional manipulation from his manager, Lee (Barry Keoghan) can make it better. The stress is also taking a toll on his voice, which is a problem because Abel is in the middle of a massive international tour. He thinks his luck might finally turn when he meets Anima (Jenna Ortega), but Anima has issues of her own – and Abel is about to find out exactly how deep those issues go.

This movie “starts” three separate times. At first, it launches into a music video that seems to be part of the movie but is actually just an ad for the album being released in conjunction with the production. Then come the production titles and the beginning of the film, which runs for another five minutes before the opening credits start scrolling over the screen. Once those finish, you get a fade to black and a title card. After that, the show runs uninterrupted until you get bored and leave the theater.

There’s style over substance, and then there’s this, which is in a class of its own. I was curious if Hurry Up Tomorrow would hold any interest for me, since I have no particular feelings about The Weeknd. The answer is: not much. The film’s highlights are the elements that dig into the psychological thriller, but most of the runtime is either Abel performing his music, or watching people listening to his music, or thinking about performing his music, or taking a bunch of drugs and writing his music in the bathroom… you get the idea. I think there might be a TV-episode amount of actual plot in the movie. The rest of that runtime just feels like advertising.

This movie picks up its R-rating for a huge volume of profanity and similar masses of drug use, - standard for films about the music industry - but it also branches out into nudity and bloody violence for variety’s sake. The concert and club sequences also feature some strobing lights, if that’s an issue for you.

Maybe this production will land better with The Weeknd’s fans, but for me it feels like two hours of flashy navel-gazing strung together on a loose thriller plot. The film doesn’t bother to explain itself; rather than creating a sense of mystery or intrigue, it makes the narrative feel shallow and underdeveloped. If the script spent half as much time developing the plot as it does on lingering shots of the lead’s face, it might have been more satisfying.