The greatest hits on Hulu, which started streaming today, is a film with a fascinating concept. Many of us have experienced a pang of nostalgia or recalled a memory when listening to a certain song. The greatest hits Take that one step further. What if certain songs could literally Go back to the past?
That is the enigma faced by the protagonist of The greatest hits, a woman who finds herself traveling back in time to her past to visit her now-dead boyfriend. Written and directed by Ned Benson (The disappearance of Eleanor Rigby), the film stars American-English actress Lucy Boynton, who you may know from her roles in the 2016 film. sing street and 2018 Bohemian Rhapsody.
But although the initial concept of The greatest hits It’s fascinating, the actual execution of the plot is a little murky. After all, time travel plots are notoriously confusing. If you got lost along the way, don’t worry: Jugo Mobile is here to help you. Continue reading for an analysis of The greatest successplot summary and The greatest hits ending explained, including which song is missing from The greatest hits the movie is.
The greatest hits movie plot summary:
We meet Harriet (Lucy Boynton) on the second anniversary of the death of her boyfriend, Max (David Corenswet). Harriet loves music and worked as a music producer before Max died in a fatal car accident. Since Max’s death, Harriet has discovered that certain songs literally make her travel back in time to the moment in her and Max’s relationship when they heard the song together for the first time. But no matter how many times Harriet plays the song that was playing on the day of the car accident and travels back to that moment, she can’t convince Max to stop the car to avoid the accident.
Because Harriet can’t control when she might hear a song that takes her back in time, she wears earplugs and headphones when she’s in public. She is also searching for a specific “lost song” whose name she doesn’t remember, but she believes it will take her back to the exact moment to prevent the car accident and save Max. Her best friend Morris (Austin Crute) urges her to let go of the past and live in the present, but Harriet can’t…until she meets a new boy named David (Justin H. Min).
Harriet meets David at a grief support group. David recently lost both of his parents. Despite his sister’s pleas to sell, David is determined to continue running his parents’ antique store as a way to keep his memory alive. When they meet, David immediately falls in love with Harriet and asks her out. They have a good time, although David thinks it’s a little strange that Harriet keeps her headphones on all the time due to a “medical condition” and that she runs away from him when she hears a song that takes her back in time. However, Harriet tries to make the new relationship work.
After David sees Harriet pass out due to a time travel spell, she tries to explain her situation. He doesn’t believe her. Later, when David takes Harriet to her parents’ antique store, she realizes that she has been there before. She goes through her parents’ old records until she finds the cover of an album she recognizes and realizes it is the “missing song.” She promises David that she can prove to him that time travel is real and asks him where the best hiding place is in the store. He tells her that he is an old school desk.
What is the song missing in The greatest hits movie?
Harriet plays the song, Mozart’s Fantasia in D Minor, and travels back in time when she visited the antique store with Max. It is the day of the car accident, when Max bought a chair at the antique store, and it is the moment when Harriet believes that she can save his life. But no matter what Harriet tells Max, she can’t convince him not to buy the chair. She gives up and decides to use the remaining time (the length of the song) writing a note for David. She leaves the note on the school desk and returns to the present. Present-day David finds the note and finally believes Harriet.
David and Harriet are still trying to have a normal relationship. But after Harriet is thrown into the past once again (courtesy of that infamous “Kars 4 Kids” jingle), she realizes that she can’t spend the rest of her life this way. Then she comes up with a plan.
The greatest hits ending explained:
As Harriet explains to David, it seems that she can’t change anyone else’s behavior when she travels through time, but she can change her own behavior. She decided to travel back to the day she met Max at a music festival and make the decision that she will never have a relationship with him. This also means that she may never meet David. Before leaving, she and David promise to find each other in the new timeline.
Harriet travels back in time to the music festival where she met Max and this time refuses to follow him into the crowd. As a result, she and Max never date. We move forward to the present day in the new timeline, where it is revealed that Harriet seems to remember nothing about her afterlife. She sees Max in a coffee shop with another woman but she doesn’t recognize him. In the final scene of the film, Harriet ends up next to David at a concert. Although they have no memory of their other life together, they both seem to experience a spark of recognition. Or maybe it’s just interest.
Either way, the movie ends with the implication that, although it won’t be the same story, Harriet and David found each other and will be together in this timeline. There you have it! Everything you saw on screen was undone in the last ten minutes of the film. It’s bittersweet, to say the least. It is not explained whether David’s parents still die and, if they do, whether he can still leave the antique store and move on from their deaths, a realization that Harriet’s struggle with her grief helped him achieve. It’s a little plot hole!
But at least Harriet won’t have to spend the rest of her life literally dragged back in time by music. That’s good!
