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Will The Idea of You feature the next great fake boy band?
I can't believe I wrote 700 words on a movie I haven't even seen.
Honesty hour: the upcoming movie I’m most excited to see is The Idea of You. Yes, the Anne Hathaway MILF movie based on thinly veiled Harry Styles fanfiction, in which she falls in love with the leader of a world famous boy band. But it looks cute, romantic comedies are on the upswing, I love Anne Hathaway, and director Michael Showalter has a solid track record (he’s perhaps best known for The Big Sick and co-writing Wet Hot American Summer). Based on the trailer, it seems like behind the whirlwind romance is a story about an older woman refreshing her life and coming into her own (relatable to many!), as well as the pitfalls of piercing the illusion of a male pop star’s attainability (relatable to very few!). Amazon is making a huge mistake by not putting this in theaters. Anyone But You has cleared over $200 million worldwide, and Anne Hathaway would be a true box office draw… there is money being left on the table!
The film premiered at SXSW last weekend, and early reviews have been very positive. It doesn’t seem like it’ll be a great movie, but it sure as hell seems like it’ll be a good time. I’m particularly intrigued by “August Moon,” the film’s in-universe One Direction. Fake pop bands have long been a part of popular cinema, from The Monkees to The Wonders to 4*Town. Will August Moon join their esteemed ranks? We’ll have to see when the movie comes out. If those songs aren’t catchy, if the looks aren’t right, we wouldn’t buy that Nicholas Galitzine would be a fantasy Harry Styles.
What makes me optimistic is the involvement of Savan Kotecha, a Max Martin acolyte who mentored One Direction on The X-Factor and wrote many of their early hits. (“What Makes You Beautiful” was written about his wife.) It’s an incredibly savvy choice by this film’s production team, and a good sign that August Moon will deliver some certified bops. Kotecha’s Wikipedia page is pretty much a list of the best pop songs of the past fifteen years, performed by the likes of Ariana Grande and Usher and The Weeknd.
It’s not Kotecha’s first foray into writing music for movies; he contributed to the soundtrack for the ill-fated Charlie’s Angels reboot and snagged an Oscar nomination for writing “Husavik,” from Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga1. But this is his first film project that ties directly to his pop music career. He claims that “not once did we bring up or think One Direction. [In] our minds, this was just 'boy band.'” But we’ll have to wait for the full soundtrack to judge for ourselves.
So far, one song has been released: “Dance Before We Walk,” which is prominently featured in the film’s trailer. Written by Kotecha and Carl Falk, who also wrote a bunch of 1D tunes, it’s a plausible as an album cut, but not a hit single. That chorus is an earworm, but it largely comes off as a tune more likely to take over car commercials than teen girls’ hearts. It doesn’t sound particularly like a boy band song. It’s more Walk The Moon than One Direction, even if there’s a lyric that goes “I think I need a new direction lately.” “Dance Before We Walk” is catchy, yet fairly anonymous. But boy bands were never successful solely because of their music. Their image is at least half the reason for their success, so we’ll have to see how things play out in the film. The promotional images of the fake band feel period accurate to me (I assume/hope this film takes place around 2014), but look a bit too low rent to sell these guys as one of the biggest pop acts in the world. Streaming movies get streaming marketing budgets, I guess.
The Idea of You streams on Amazon Prime starting May 2.
(An actual music journalist is probably going to put a piece together about this movie’s soundtrack and get takes from 1D stans. Would be a fun thing to write…)
I will never forgive the Oscars for shunting a beautiful performance of that song — filmed at the actual Husavik in Iceland! — to a pre-ceremony broadcast.
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