Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Idea of You’ on Amazon Prime Video, a Pleasingly Horny May/December Rom-Com Led By Anne Hathaway

In The Idea of You (now streaming on Amazon Prime Video), Anne Hathaway plays the mother of a high school senior, and I just crumbled to dust. The star of The Princess Diaries is now the older woman in a May/December romance, and time continues to devour our bones, ceaseless in its hunger. But The Idea of You isn’t an existential endeavor – rather, it’s a rom-com adapting a novel by Robinne Lee, starring Hathaway as a 40ish woman who ends up smooshing face with a somewhat significantly younger gent, specifically a superfamous boy band singer played by Nicholas Galitzine (Red, White and Royal Blue). And as happens when the inevitable slog of the universe grinds you down, I ended up enjoying the film much more than expected, and that frankly has more to do with the chemistry of its stars than my eroding cynicism. 

THE IDEA OF YOU: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Off the top, the most immediately noticeable component of The Idea of You is, obviously, Hathaway stealing Dakota Johnson’s bangs. Highway robbery. Anyway, Hathaway plays Solene Marchand, owner of a Silver Lake art gallery and mother of 17-year-old Izzy (Ella Rubin). Solene is still feeling the sting of her divorce – Daniel (Reid Scott) is a total fartstain who cheated on her, leaving her talking to herself in the mirror like a mildly endearing, mildly eccentric person who’s very much the lead in a rom-com. Daniel’s supposed to take his younger girlfriend and Izzy and her friends to Coachella, but, true to butthole form, he backs out at the last second because of work stuff, leaving Solene to accompany the teens to a scorching-hot dustbowl for a concert and VIP meet-and-greet with August Moon, the totally HAWWWT boy band of the moment. 

Solene’s plan was to go camping by herself and have a Me Weekend, but now she finds herself wandering through the VIP area, looking for a sanitary toilet (always a challenge at a music festival). She helps herself to a random door of a random trailer and finds herself staring right into the not-at-all-random face of Hayes Campbell (Galitzine), the guy in August Moon who isn’t the cocky guy or the dirtbag-lite guy or the cute demure guy. No, he’s the British guy, tall, heavily accented, always lightly smoldering. They banter and he changes his shirt – shirt-changing is always something that happens in this particular movie situation – and there’s enough there there for him to take the stage that night and dedicate one of those teasing maybe/could-be love songs to “someone I met earlier.” Hmm.

Solene goes home and soon thereafter is subjected to a 40th birthday party which her bestie stages as a makeshift speed-dating event, deeeeeeep sigggggggghhhh. There’s the guy with too many pets and the guy who tries too hard to be funny and the guy who’s actually married (oops) and then one day Hayes Campbell walks into Solene’s art gallery, trailing paparazzi and tittering fangirls, and buys all the art. He charms his way into extending the impromptu hangout, which eventually results in her saying, “Let’s go to my house. I want to make you a sandwich,” although when I first heard that line all I heard was “I want to make you a SEXwich.”

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. They share a little bit of themselves psychologically, which leads to Hayes playing Solene’s piano like he wants to play her, tenderly, of course. They make out like mad and then she pushes him away and tries to come to her boring old SENSES like a total killjoy. It JUST won’t WORK. I mean, she’s TRYING to be REASONABLE here. She’s got like 16 years on the guy, and her daughter is the fangirl around these parts. He leaves and she drops off Izzy at summer camp and then gets an invite to join Hayes in New York, where August Moon is playing a gig. She texts back no then watches a corny-ass August Moon music video and then – oh HELL yeah – hops on a plane. She walks into his hotel room in a Dress That Demands Capitalization and they have really awkward fumbling ouch-don’t-put-that-there/hey-that’s-my-leg sex and then never see each other again, the end. No! That’s not true! I’m lying! This is a movie about love and fame and what happens when you’re dating a big fat celebrity and you’re trying to keep it a secret from your kid and bestie and ex and the rest of the world, because the rest of the world has the internet, and the internet is full of jerks. It’s also sorta about how hot it’s getting in here. Are you feeling warmer? I definitely am. Phew. Somebody turn on the a/c, please.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Hathaway hasn’t turned on the hormones like this since Love and Other Drugs. Phew.

Performance Worth Watching: Hathaway shows the versatility that made her a star shortly after the turn of the century, grounding The Idea of You’s fluffier romantic stuff with a welcome shot of pragmatic realism. It’s her best role among many less-than-satisfying films (Armageddon Time being an exception) in recent years.

Memorable Dialogue: Once the shit inevitably hits the fan and Teh Interwebs find out what’s happening with Solene and Hayes, her bestie points out an ugly truth: “Did I not warn you? People hate happy women.”

Sex and Skin: Here’s a reminder that you don’t need to see any/all of people’s naughty bits to be inspired to go outside, turn the hose on EXTREME BLAST and cool yourself off.

Our Take: OK, the movie The Idea of You truly reminds me of is Notting Hill, which isn’t just the standard-bearer for the dating-a-celeb rom-com, but the standard-bearer for all modern rom-coms. The fresh wrinkle here is the age difference between the principals and the social-media-era setting, two key components in the awful modern cocktail of pop-cultural scrutiny. The former isn’t a big deal at all among consenting adults, but the latter, a gross confluence of jealous ids piling on with utmost cruelty, makes the era of supermarket tabloids (and Horse and Hound magazine, of course) look like a utopia.

Not that the film makes any particularly revelatory points about the basic human need for love, acceptance and privacy. There isn’t much on its mind beyond celeb-meets-normie love-story fantasies within familiar rom-com constructs; it roasts the hoary old chestnut of Will Love Supersede The Outside World’s Attempts To Rip These People Apart Like A Kid Peeling Off One Sock And Feeding It To The Toilet as that chestnut has been roasted many times before. It’s the usual hard lesson that two incredibly attractive people will never be able to hump in a vacuum.

But the chemistry between Hathaway and Galitizine makes the movie function in a rather pleasing fashion, and not just in their superficial pheremonal emissions. The more horny elements work quite well, and it might not if the confluence of director Michael Showalter’s management of tone (a little more rom-dram than -com at times) and a relatively nuanced screenplay (by Showalter and Jennifer Westfeldt) didn’t set up their leads for success. Hearts are shared, bodies are shared, and some fairly relatable doubts and insecurities are shared in the harsh light of external judgment. What happens between Solene and Hayes isn’t always convincing – the dickhead-ex subplot overstretches our suspension of disbelief more than once – but I was compelled to care about what happens to these two people, for reasons maybe possibly almost beyond the desire to see them further filth up a set of sheets. Can love inside the house transcend the mess outside of it? Will this movie end with puppies floating on clouds or with a dose of hard, pragmatic reality? No spoilers, but a bit of both is a nice place to land.

Our Call: The Idea of You is smart where No Hard Feelings and Anyone But You are more fun, but in the wake of these three movies, it feels like the sexy rom-com is back. STREAM IT. 

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.