Jenna Ortega and the Weeknd’s pop star drama is no ‘Purple Rain’

More like Hurry Up and END!

For the record, the Weeknd (also known as Abel Tesfaye) has released several songs that I think are terrific. He has a great ear for melody and a sensational voice. “Blinding Lights,” “Starboy,” and the few I’ve heard from his latest album are genuinely great. I’m saluting the man’s talent loudly and clearly before I explain that Hurry Up Tomorrow, the confessional vanity film he co-wrote, co-produced, and stars in, is atrocious. 

The nearly plot-free movie is self-indulgent, overly serious, and, worst of all, just plain dull. It’s all the more upsetting because his music can be so invigorating. How can someone who created those songs put out something as lifeless as this?

It’s not like a pop exploitation film needs to have a diamond-sharp screenplay like The Usual Suspects. Hell, A Hard Day’s Night and Purple Rain are classics because they are super light on plot, heavy on music, and offer a stage to make the artists look really cool. 

Hurry Up Tomorrow ignores this formula, and is a 105-minute exercise of being stuck with an annoying sad sack who happens to have written some songs you love.

There is very little story in this movie, but the basic situation is this: Tesfaye is on tour and he’s miserable. He’s broken up with a girl, and she won’t pick up the phone. He cries and complains about it, then gets angry and violent, and his manager (Barry Keoghan) can only get him to perform by goading him with cocaine and telling him he’s a “superhero” and “not human.” After the show, there’s booze, girls, and hotel suites, but Abel’s locked in the bathroom, being sad. 

Concurrent with this, we see Jenna Ortega (her character’s name is listed as Anima online, but I didn’t catch it) melodramatically burn down a house, get in her truck, and drive to see the Weeknd in concert in Los Angeles. 

And there she is in the audience, making eye contact with Abel just when his anxiety levels hit the roof, forcing him to lose his voice. He cuts the show short — something that actually happened at SoFi Stadium in 2022 — and dashes. 

Anima sneaks backstage and literally crashes into Abel. They join forces, escape, and share a pleasant evening at the Santa Monica Pier featuring color-saturated lighting and shallow focus lenses. 

Evading Keoghan, they go to a new hotel, where Abel plays her a new song on his phone. She weeps and says that it’s as if his songs are about her. There is a fade out.

In the light of day, Abel realizes he has to get back to his real life. He must see his doctor, he must go to Australia to perform. He thanks Anima for a nice night, and… she flips out. She turns violent and goes Misery on him, eventually tying him to the bed (in a Christ pose!) while she plays his old hits, analyzing them like Patrick Bateman and doing (what I believe to be) an intentionally silly dance. 

This is, by the way, pretty much the only sequence in the entire film with any life to it. And it comes almost at the end. 

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Throughout their scenes, Abel blubbers and whimpers, while Anima talks about safe spaces and being toxic. I half expected to get billed a copay for a therapy appointment. 

It’s worth pointing out, though, that the only women in this entire movie are the unseen ex-girlfriend who sends Abel into a cursing rage, and then the groupie who goes bananas and explodes into violence. One wonders what the Weeknd’s female audience will think of all this.

In a way, I respect Tesfaye’s sincerity, but he’s not a good enough actor to pull this off. It’s all just a little… embarrassing. Hell, even Morrissey would watch this movie and tell him to touch grass.

There are only two concert performance scenes in the movie, and director Trey Edward Shults (whose first film, Krisha, was marvelous, but his later ones, It Comes at Night and Waves, never quite delivered) shoots them in the least dynamic way. Abel stays in a medium close-up, and there’s no choreography worth mentioning. (The songs themselves are good.) All the party scenes bet the ranch that crazy lighting will get the job done in lieu of anything dramatic. 

Ortega and Keoghan do their best with the paper-thin material, but there’s a hollowness front and center of this film. I should report that the studio did not host press screenings for Hurry Up Tomorrow, so I attended a public preview marketed to the Weeknd fans. The movie was met with stone silence for most of the running time, eventually turning to derisive laughter.

Bad movies come and go, but Hurry Up Tomorrow presents the Weeknd as so needy and so irritating that it may have lasting effects. The next time one of his songs comes up on a playlist, I may hit fast-forward. I’ve spent enough time with this guy. Grade: D-