Six dollars. It’s the price of a coffee from Starbucks, a paperback novel or a six pack of Diet Coke. There are many wonderful things that you can get for six dollars, yet I spent my hard-earned six dollars renting the newest artistic flop by Abel Tesfaye (AKA The Weeknd), a film entitled “Hurry Up Tomorrow.”
Whether you’ve endured the objectively short, but somehow agonizingly long, 105-minute runtime of this film or merely seen the infamous “Shut the f— up” scene on TikTok, you can certainly agree that Tesfaye has a long way to go in the acting department. A man with such an interesting backstory and nuanced onstage persona would, in theory, captivate audiences on the silver screen, but his performance falls flat. He acts primarily with his eyes, but the only way in which he uses them is by opening them really wide in moments of conflict. Otherwise, his on-screen movement is mostly limited to the following: pulling the hood of his sweatshirt up and down, sweating profusely and delivering his lines in either a subtle whisper or a full-on yell. There is no in between.
There is also something to be said about the plot. Never mind the major plotholes and inconsistencies: How exactly can Jenna Ortega’s character afford a ticket to The Weeknd’s concert yet have to steal gas from people at the station? The storyline relies too heavily on the atmosphere it creates rather than the story that is told. The film’s director, Trey Edward Shults — probably at the behest of Tesfaye himself — concerns himself too much with trying to evoke the signature A24 style that many films nowadays strive for. The heavy synth soundtrack and color scheme of deep blues, reds and blacks are pleasing visually and audibly, but that is where the viewer’s enjoyment ends. There are only about two major plot points in the entire film, one of them solely taken from a highly publicized 2022 incident in which Tesfaye lost his voice during a concert.
In addition to the empty storyline, the entire film felt like Tesfaye’s egocentric love letter to his own career. In one particularly egregious scene, Ortega’s character sings and dances around the shot, explaining to Tesfaye that his songs, especially his more popular and upbeat ones, are actually more complex than people think, further characterizing him as some sort of musical prophet and prodigy. The entire concept of the film — releasing a feature-length fictional drama alongside a new album with the same name — comes across not as the stroke of artistic genius that he intends it to be, but rather as an attempt at further capitalizing upon his adoring and unrelenting fanbase. It also appears as a desperate attempt to bring himself out of the mainstream and into the culturally dominant concept of the sad and brooding alternative artist his character in the film portrays. How do I know this? He doesn’t even change his name in the movie.
Now, I don’t mean to say that The Weeknd is not an incredibly talented performer and musical genius. He is, but Abel Tesfaye might not be. His recent creative decisions have evidenced this notion — does anyone remember “The Idol?” I wish I didn’t. To that end, and I say this with love, Abel: Perhaps just stick to music. And I want my money back.
