The Greatest Hits has an interesting premise of time travel, drama, and music, which was already done two years earlier – but The Greatest Hits did it better. Time travel is one of the most popular themes in film, and it has been used in pretty much every genre at some point. Time travel is also quite tricky as it poses big questions about its use and consequences, which more often than not only create confusion among the audience. Time travel has often been seen in romantic movies, and the latest example is The Greatest Hits.
Directed by Ned Benson, The Greatest Hits follows Harriet (Lucy Boynton), a young music producer mourning her boyfriend Max (David Corenswet), who died in a car accident two years earlier. Harriet can travel back in time to specific moments with Max whenever she hears a song linked to that memory, and it’s an ability she can’t control. At a bereavement group, Harriet meets David (Justin H. Min) and they quickly bond, but her time travel abilities start messing with this new relationship. Although The Greatest Hits has an interesting premise, it was already done two years earlier, but Benson’s film did it better.
Two years before The Greatest Hits arrived, another romance fantasy film with time travel, music, and a couple hit by tragedy was released: Press Play. Directed by Greg Björkman, Press Play tells the story of Laura (Clara Rugaard), who falls in love with her friend Chloe’s stepbrother, Harrison (Lewis Pullman). One day, Harrison is hit and killed by a car, and four years later, at Chole’s wedding, Laura is given a mixtape back that she made with Harrison, and learns that, when listening to it, she’s transported back in time to specific moments with Harrison.
Laura uses this to warn Harrison about his death, but when she returns to the present, she learns that Harrison still died but differently, and the present was altered. Laura keeps trying to save Harrison but he still dies and other events are altered, and she’s eventually forced to accept she can’t be with Harrison. Laura uses a song on the mixtape’s B-side that takes her back to the moment they were going to meet for the first time and decides not to meet Harrison. At the end of Press Play, Chloe invites Laura to Christmas dinner, where Harrison arrives and introduces himself to her.
Press Play and The Greatest Hits have the exact same premise, but the latter did a couple of things better than the former. While Press Play focused on Laura’s efforts to prevent Harrison’s death, even proving to him that she came from the future, The Greatest Hits focused more on Harriet’s grief and how this and her time travel abilities were affecting her daily life. Harriet was also given a chance to move on when she met David, and it was this new relationship that motivated her to do something about her time travel and her grief over Max.
While both Harriet and Laura had the same realization about their relationships and found the same solution, Harriet did it more from a place of wanting to move on and also heal herself, while Laura had no other choice than to accept she wasn’t going to be able to save Harrison the way she wanted. Press Play gave Laura a more hopeful ending by having her and Harrison meet again, thus giving them another chance, while The Greatest Hits had a more ambiguous yet grounded ending with Harriet and David coming across at a concert, but they’re not shown properly meeting again.
The Greatest Hits also has a better pace than Press Play, with the latter spending a significant part of the first act exploring how Laura and Harrison meet, and takes its time to get to the accident and the time travel part, while The Greatest Hits goes straight into it. Press Play and The Greatest Hits show how the same story can be done in different ways, and in the end, the latter has more substance and gives its protagonist more development than the former.