The Idea of You review: 'impossible escapism' starring Anne Hathaway
Steamy romcom about a 40-year-old who falls for a boy band singer

"Anne Hathaway's career in Hollywood began 23 years ago" in a film that dramatised a classic teenage girl fantasy, said Johnny Oleksinski in the New York Post: in "The Princess Diaries", she played a geeky young woman who discovers she is actually royalty.
Now, Hathaway has delivered "a second dose of impossible escapism with 'The Idea of You'", a steamy Amazon Prime romcom in which she stars as Solène, a 40-year-old single mother who falls for Hayes, a 24-year-old pop star. Solène meets this Harry Styles-type character (Nicholas Galitzine), when she takes her daughter to Coachella, and stumbles into his trailer backstage, having mistaken it for a VIP toilet. "Sparks fly", but she then flees and he has to track her down to the art gallery she runs in Los Angeles, thus setting in motion an unlikely "celeb-and-normie courtship".
The film has bundles of charm, a "smart script" and succeeds in large part thanks to Hathaway's very "human" performance. Hathaway and Galitzine do have chemistry, said Brian Viner in the Daily Mail, but the story is "uneven" and "laughably predictable", providing "loads of 'rom'" and not enough "'com'". It might have been better, too, if Hathaway looked more credibly middle-aged. "As it is, she is beyond radiant, gleaming a lot brighter than all the younger females around her. So it's no great surprise that Hayes goes weak at the knees" for her.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
This "ghastly" film was adapted from a "'mummy porn' novel" by the US writer Robinne Lee, and it throbs with "intense 'fan fiction' energy", said Kevin Maher in The Times. If you were being kind, you might say there were hints here of "Notting Hill" or "Roman Holiday". But you're most likely to just wish you could demand your two hours back.
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
-
5 costly cartoons about the national debt
Cartoons Political cartoonists take on the USA's financial hole, rare bipartisan agreement, and Donald Trump and Mike Johnson.
-
Green goddess salad recipe
The Week Recommends Avocado can be the creamy star of the show in this fresh, sharp salad
-
The Biden cover-up: a 'near-treasonous' conspiracy
Talking Point Using 'Trumpian' tactics, the former president's inner circle maintained a conspiracy of silence around his cognitive and physical decline
-
Green goddess salad recipe
The Week Recommends Avocado can be the creamy star of the show in this fresh, sharp salad
-
Ancient India: living traditions – 'ethereal and sensual' exhibition
The Week Recommends Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism are explored in show that remains 'remarkably compact'
-
6 well-preserved homes built in the 1930s
Feature Featuring a restored 1934 colonial in Arizona and a cold-storage warehouse turned loft in New York City
-
Things in Nature Merely Grow: memoir of 'harsh beauty' after loss
The Week Recommends Chinese-American novelist Yiyun Li's 'devastating' memoir explores the deaths of her two sons
-
Sirens: entertaining satire on the lives of the ultra-wealthy stars Julianne Moore
The Week Recommends This 'blackly comic affair' unfurls at a 'breakneck speed'
-
Mrs Warren's Profession: 'tour-de-force' from Imelda Staunton and daughter Bessie Carter
The Week Recommends Mother-daughter duo bring new life to George Bernard Shaw's morality play
-
Critics' choice: Steak houses that break from tradition
Feature Eight hours of slow-roasting prime rib, a 41-ounce steak, and a former Catholic school chapel turned steakhouse
-
Tash Aw's 6 favorite books about forbidden love
Feature The Malaysian novelist recommends works by James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, and more