There is a film out there about what happens when a famous celebrity falls in love with the owner of a quaint store. That would be Notting Hill, the film you would be better off watching than this tepid Prime Video release, where Anne ‘The Princess Diaries’ Hathaway and Nicholas Galitzine, the closeted gay prince from Amazon’s diligently sizzling Red, White and Royal Blue, take a romp in several luxurious beds and raise barely enough spark to light a matchstick.
In what the film clearly considers a bold departure, what’s different is that Hathaway’s Solene (an art gallery owner) is 16 years older than Galitzine’s Hayes (a boy band heartthrob). When they are thrown together due to circumstances that are extremely contrived, he falls hook, line and sinker – for pretty hazy reasons. She resists, even if the film bluntly establishes that as a 40-year-old divorcee raising a teenage daughter (Rubin, a wrong choice, as she looks far older than 16 and too close to Hathaway in age), Solene doesn’t have much fun in her life.
Well, if Hayes’s lispy English accent and lazy good looks can be drool-worthy, Solene as a committed art dealer perhaps should have pushed back more. Here, she is selling some dubious pieces in all seriousness as precious art – a routine calendar with markings on it is described as “self-portrait of life as an artist” – and there he, like a sane, ordinary person, has his doubts.
But when Hayes buys “all the pieces” in her gallery as part of his seduction act, Solene is very happy to sell them to a man buying “art like apples”.
No, so that is not much of a source of friction between them, nor Hayes’s juvenile song lyrics, his tiring concerts, his band members’ stupid antics, or even, in a completely unlikable scene, Solene and Hayes emptying out the rotting contents of a broken-down fridge.
What comes between them is the age difference, as filtered through social media. But The Idea of You has no idea of how to take it forward, or to even leave it sideways. It just drifts along, only randomly hitting some right notes (Rubin’s Izzy has a nice reaction to the online trolling, and then not).
Of the film’s many crimes, the worst may be suggesting Hathaway is past her prime. She is the only one who might age well from this.
The Idea of You director: Michael Showalter
The Idea of You cast: Anne Hathaway, Nicholas Galitzine, Ella Rubin, Reid Scott
The Idea of You rating: 1.5 stars
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