On a Saturday night in 2022, Abel Tesfaye — the Canadian superstar known as The Weeknd — got up onstage. He’d had a tough tour and a tough career — stratospheric success had catapulted him early on to extreme heights of fame. The physical and mental stress associated with the constant demands of superstardom put a strain on his singing voice, and that night he was dealing with the effects.
According to a doctor, he had MTD (Muscle Tension Dysphonia), a mostly-mental affliction of the vocal cords. It was becoming more of an issue; every night, he had to strain just a bit harder to hit the high notes of his chart-topping R&B hits. And that night, it snapped.
He went to sing, and all that came out was a confused garble. He tried again; this time the result was worse. Eventually, he gave in to the inevitable, turned, and walked off the stage in what must have been one of the most difficult nights of his life.
And now, he’s making it all our problem.
WATCH | Hurry Up Tomorrow trailer:
This is not in reference to his most recent album, Hurry Up Tomorrow, based on his experience at that concert and his proposed plan to retire his “Weeknd” moniker for good. Instead, this is for the infinitely weaker follow-up movie of the same name that stars Jenna Ortega, Barry Keoghan and Riley Keough.
The movie also aims to unpack what that moment meant for Tesfaye and his future. And while Hurry Up Tomorrow the album does so with danceable though dreary singles, Hurry Up Tomorrow the movie absolutely does not.
Lazy writing
That’s not to say there aren’t singles. Including a bait-and-switch piano ballad off the top that, for all intents and purposes, seems like the beginning of the movie. Instead, it becomes just the first of many jokes The Weeknd and director Trey Edward Shults play on their audience. After the song finishes, an advertisement for the album occupies the screen, begging fans to buy or stream it now.
As painfully transparent an excuse to hawk a product as that is, these moments of bad-faith levity are all we have to hold on to. Here, laughing at Tesfaye’s navel gazing is the only lifesaver to keep you from drowning in the boredom of his imagination.
But that’s only if you can ignore all the fluff and arcane symbolism. We are treated to admittedly gorgeous shots of housefires, macro shots of fizzing drinks and epilepsy-inducing light shows. We are taken through a bloated, almost satirically abstract dream sequence involving a crying woman in a stained nightdress and Tesfaye as a sad-eyed child, singing a foreign-language song in front of a bonfire.
Then, after what feels like twenty minutes of booze, parties and a seemingly unending slideshow of opening credits, we get our first hints at a coherent narrative.
Tesfaye is crying (one of two acting-related talents he seems to have picked up) over a phone message from a woman we never meet (voiced by Keough), who has seemingly chosen to end her relationship with him, citing vague behavioural problems that become easier to guess at as the movie progresses.
That betrayal inspires Tesfaye to essentially turn into a stalker, pleading with her to call him back, peppering her with an unending slew of text messages, missed calls and screaming diatribes around how famous and iconic he is compared to her. It’s one of the few inklings of worth Hurry Up Tomorrow seems to offer: a self-flagellating honesty about some worrying faults Tesfaye is (one would hope) aware of in himself.
But it’s a fairly insignificant olive branch in the face of what comes next. That is an equal parts shallow and boring tryst with superfan Anima (Ortega) who tracks him down after his infamous show. They run away together, walk by the pier and eventually fall exhausted into each other’s arms in a nearby hotel room.
When they wake up, problems arise. Tesfaye, in another of Hurry Up Tomorrow‘s hysterical moments, first brushes Anima off, then screams at the now clearly unhinged woman who begs to tag along on the rest of the tour. Shut up, he says. Just shut the f–k up — he was actually trying to be nice at first, can’t she see that? His face is wild now; it’s the first of a few crazy-eyed moments by Tesfaye that nearly rival Jim Carrey in terms of eyebrow-based comedy.
Except it’s not a comedy. Because that’s when Ortega knocks him out and straps him to the bed.
Uselessly confusing
For any other movie, this set-up would be verging on spoiling the plot. Except that in Hurry Up Tomorrow, the set-up is the movie; there is hardly anything else of substance worth talking about or analyzing.
Sure, we could try to take seriously the moment Anima is brought to tears over a sample Tesfaye plays her from his iPhone. We could question why she’s named Anima, a Jungian archetype meant to represent the feminine side of a man’s unconscious mind.
We could even discuss whether Tesfaye and Shults are trying to set up some sort of extended Narcissus metaphor when his manager Lee (Keoghan) looks at his reflection and declares himself handsome. Or when Ortega hilariously dances while explaining the meaning behind Tesfaye’s biggest tracks back to the artist himself.
We could do those things, but Hurry Up Tomorrow does not deserve them. For all but the most devoted fans (and likely the hate-watchers) this is a hopelessly pointless therapy assignment serving no one but Tesfaye himself.
And the hubris needed to believe the rest of the world cares enough about his psyche to do that therapeutic work for him makes it almost insulting. Hurry Up Tomorrow is the type of movie that won’t even leave you upset if your seatmate takes out their phone.
It’s original — but it’s also bad
It’s especially disappointing given the opportunity the movie presents.
When Shia LaBeouf opted to publicly pick apart his self-destructive tendencies, the result was the infinitely gorgeous and eye-opening Honey Boy. When Pete Davidson questioned his own unambitious success, the result was the incisive The King of Staten Island.
Tesfaye’s examination fails because it does not feel the burden or responsibility of entertaining an audience that does not owe you their time. That’s even as modern movies are given the benefit of the doubt to higher and higher degrees. With Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis or Todd Phillips’ Joker: Folie à Deux, many critics felt they should at least acknowledge the bravery of the creators. They did something original at least, didn’t they? Don’t we owe them thanks for that?
Except this ignores the fundamental truth that originality isn’t actually difficult; all you need to build an original boat is to craft one with a hole in the middle. What’s difficult is making something original and good.
That’s something The Weeknd may know about in music but, as this movie proves, he has yet to learn about it in film.
