Last year saw the release of Trap and Smile 2, two thrillers about fictional pop stars in peril. Hurry Up Tomorrow, the latest ego stroke from real-life megastar The Weeknd, instead signals a perilous potential pivot in profession for the artist formerly known as Abel Tesfaye. Purportedly a companion film to his album of the same name released in January, it’s neither an anthology of segments inspired by songs from the record, nor is it a concert movie or extended music video. Reportedly inspired by an on-tour incident where Tesfaye/The Weeknd lost his voice while performing, the movie uses this inciting incident to spin a tired tale of obsessive fandom and self-destruction. It feels more of a piece with Tesfaye’s disastrous HBO series The Idol, in which he plays a seedy drifter attempting to hijack the career of a troubled pop singer. Just because his character isn’t quite as deplorable this time around doesn’t make the end result any less odious.
In Hurry Up Tomorrow, Tesfaye plays a fictionalized version of his The Weeknd alter ego, who we meet in the haze of a world tour under the guidance of his overzealous handler Lee (Barry Keoghan). Despite his success, The Weeknd remains unhappy, on the tail end of a romantic relationship that ended with vicious voicemails and emotional evisceration. The psychological stress leads to a muscle tension dysphonia diagnosis and a Halloween performance cut short due to the performer’s strained vocals, but not before he locks eyes with the alluring Anima (Jenna Ortega) in the crowd. She inexplicably barges her way backstage and finds The Weeknd, consoling him after the cancelled show and proposing they spend the night together instead. Despite their connection, the harsh light of day reveals that the pair have very different ideas about which direction each of them would like the relationship to go.
Generously, Hurry Up Tomorrow could be described as Tesfaye’s investigation into the The Weeknd façade he created after first releasing music anonymously back in 2009. He’s teased for months and years that he’d like to lay the moniker to rest and the film does connote the “burn it all down” posturing of someone eager to end an era. If it turns out this movie is the final project Tesfaye completes as The Weeknd, it’s a dissatisfying denouement to a music career filled with impeccably-produced pop songs. If it’s his audition reel for future film work, he needs to hurry up and put the brakes on that plan right now. Put bluntly: Tesfaye is not a believable actor in any capacity. When he’s not morosely mugging for the camera, he’s lashing out with the verisimilitude of a vexed chipmunk. I’m not sure I’ve seen a performer struggle this hard to play what’s ostensibly a version of themselves.
Unfortunately, Tesfaye has roped the otherwise reliable writer/director Trey Edward Shults into this shameless star vehicle, which indulges the talented young filmmaker’s worst impulses. Though the composition of shots from cinematographer Chayse Irvin are fleetingly striking, Shults simply has no idea what kind of story he wants to tell here. The threadbare script by Tesfaye, Shults and Reza Fahim only contributes sketches of characters and shadows of motivation when it’s not busy with platitude-laden dialogue. The direction is somehow even more meandering, stacking up pointless scenes of insipid impressionism for the first hour before settling on a horribly derivative storyline involving celebrity kidnapping. When Anima proceeds to fansplain the meaning of The Weeknd’s songs to the tied-up star, it’s as torturous for us in the audience as it is for the supposed protagonist.
Die hard fans of The Weeknd will no doubt be desperate to parse misunderstood meaning out of Hurry Up Tomorrow but its ostentatious pretensions couldn’t be more obvious. All the tired symbolism and vapid interactions point to an ego addict who wants us to feel bad for how rich and successful he is; “Save Your Tears” would’ve been good acting advice to take from one of his song’s titles. The climactic moment is both a stunningly shallow bit of self-aggrandizement and a tragic reminder of how misused Tesfaye’s talent is here. He has a powerful and compelling singing voice, even if he doesn’t quite know how to make the best use of it at this point in his career. If tomorrow holds more promising things for his artistry, it can’t come quickly enough.
Score – 1/5
New movies coming this weekend:
Playing in theaters is Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, an action sequel starring Tom Cruise and Hayley Atwell, extending the journey of IMF agent Ethan Hunt as he continues his mission to stop a master assassin from obtaining an AI program known as The Entity.
Also coming to theaters is Lilo & Stitch, a live-action animated remake starring Sydney Elizebeth Agudong and Billy Magnussen, which finds a lonely Hawaiian girl befriending a dog-like runaway alien, unaware that the visitor is genetically engineered to be a force of destruction.
Streaming on Netflix is Fear Street: Prom Queen, a slasher film starring India Fowler and Suzanna Son, centered around the popular girls of a high school in 1988 who begin to vanish one by one prior to their highly-anticipated prom night.