The Greatest Hits Parent Guide

Two years after the car crash that put her in a coma for a week and killed her boyfriend Max (David Corenswet), Harriet’s (Lucy Boynton) whole life has changed. She can no longer listen to the music she and Max shared – and not just because it’s emotionally difficult. As soon as Harriet hears one of those songs, she literally relives the memory. During these episodes, it appears as if Harriet can alter her past behavior so she hopes she can change Max’s and maybe prevent the collision that killed him.

Apart from the fact that no one in their right mind believes that she can time travel, there’s another wrinkle. Harriet’s met somebody. David (Justin H. Min) recently lost both his parents and met Harriet at a grief support group. Harriet is now struggling between her desire to move on and live her life, and her need to fix the worst thing that ever happened to her and save Max’s life. But she can’t have both.

It’s an interesting premise, but The Greatest Hits falls a little flat. To be perfectly honest, I’m not entirely sure why. The leads have decent chemistry, the writing isn’t particularly irritating, and it’s both sad and almost cloyingly sweet, which seems to be a winning combination for romantic fantasies. Maybe it would have landed a little better if the time travel had been used more often as a mechanism for storytelling as opposed to flashback exposition. Or maybe it’s simply that romances aren’t my preferred genre. If romantic movies are your thing, this might hit all the right notes.

Not one to break with the well-used traditions of the genre, The Greatest Hits feels like it’s been played before. You know the characters; you know how the plot will shake out. If you’re looking for a slightly melodramatic comfort-food of a movie, the familiarity is a bonus. Who needs to surprise their audience when they can play right down to them? I sound bitter, but I really don’t see that as inherently negative. Sometimes, you just want something comfortable.

With a very PG-13 sexual encounter (shoulders up), negligible violence, and brief alcohol and marijuana use, the most frequent issue for family viewing is, by far, the profanity. Even then, that’s limited to about a dozen scatological terms and a single f-bomb. It’s enough to hurt the movie’s grades with us, but it’s hardly shocking, given the rest of the genre. And that’s good, because the last thing you want when you’ve set your brain in neutral and started rolling it through this story is a surprise.