"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.
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.
-
6 well-crafted log homesFeature Featuring a floor-to-ceiling rock fireplace in Montana and a Tulikivi stove in New York
-
Film reviews: A House of Dynamite, After the Hunt, and It Was Just an AccidentFeature A nuclear missile bears down on a U.S. city, a sexual misconduct allegation rocks an elite university campus, and a victim of government terror pursues vengeance
-
Book reviews: ‘Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife’ and ‘Make Me Commissioner: I Know What’s Wrong With Baseball and How to Fix It’Feature Gertrude Stein’s untold story and Jane Leavy’s playbook on how to save baseball
-
Rachel Ruysch: Nature Into ArtFeature Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, through Dec. 7
-
Music reviews: Olivia Dean, Madi Diaz, and Hannah FrancesFeature “The Art of Loving,” “Fatal Optimist,” and “Nested in Tangles”
-
Gilbert King’s 6 favorite books about the search for justiceFeature The journalist recommends works by Bryan Stevenson, David Grann, and more
-
Ready for the apocalypseFeature As anxiety rises about the state of the world, the ranks of preppers are growing—and changing.
-
A little-visited Indian Ocean archipelagoThe Week Recommends The paradise of the Union of the Comoros features beautiful beaches, colourful coral reefs and lush forests
