Parents' Guide to

The Greatest Hits

By Tara McNamara, Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 14+

Time travel romance strikes sweet chord; pot use, language.

Movie PG-13 2024 94 minutes
The Greatest Hits Movie Poster: A record album with pictures of the stars and the movie title is pulled from a rack of albums

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Brooding, lovely, and hopeful, this time travel tale translates an emotional experience into a literal one, using sci-fi mechanics to turn the link between music and mind into a romantic fantasy. At one point or another, most adults have probably been where we meet Harriet in The Greatest Hits: Mourning the loss of a loved one (whether through death or a breakup) and listening to music that keeps us in our feelings. (Today's teens should be grateful the cassette mixtape no longer exists—it becomes a torture device for the heartbroken.) And when THAT song comes on—at the grocery store, in the gym, in the car—we're swept back to THEM, again, whether we like it or not.

Writer-director Ned Benson takes it a step further here—because Harriet isn't just marinating in her memories, she's physically present in the moments. But try as she might, she can't change Max's deadly destiny—or can she? Adding in a new romance with David, the desire to move on, and a lesson that we will love again makes for a wonderful story. The movie's pacing may be a little slow for teens, but they'll get past that because the characters are music-snob cool, the ethereal indie playlist is respectable, and the locations double as an L.A. hipster travelogue. For those who love the wishful potential of time travel movies, The Greatest Hits adds some valuable notes that should help evolve the genre.

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