Call it Tedros Derangement Syndrome: ever since The Idol aired on HBO two summers ago, Abel “The Weeknd” Tesfaye has been a pop culture leper, unable to shake accusations of bad acting (at best) and bad on set behavior (at worst). Long gone are the days of “Can’t Feel My Face” and “The Hills;” forget about 2011’s House of Balloons, which I first heard in a parking lot in Joliet, IL in early 2012, an album hyped as some kind of “new Michael Jackson.” Pitchfork championed him then, alongside peer Grimes, but just as she overshot the pop pantheon and ended up in politics (like Grace Kelly, Zsa Zsa Gabor, and now Jon Voigt), Tesfaye has continued to (try to) “prove himself” in areas other than music: can he act? Most people say no. But this isn’t a dealbreaker: look at Britney Spears, Madonna, Elvis Presley, John Lennon. No one says these are great actors, but they’re compelling in just about everything they’re in.
Spears, Madonna, Presley, and Lennon have a charisma and a warmth that Tesfaye doesn’t. The Idol and now Hurry Up Tomorrow are demonstrations of desperation, and Tesfaye is compelling precisely because he’s not that great. You’re watching someone really try to be good, even passable, and it’s not working. He reads as dangerous, unctuous, and vain, without any of the redeeming qualities of an anti-hero or the magnetism of good villains. He’s meant to be creepy in The Idol, where he plays a pop-world manipulator with his hooks in Lily Rose Depp, but in Hurry Up Tomorrow, he’s the pop star, and he’s playing himself. The first half of the movie is typical musician movie routine: a couple of songs to an anachronistically sold-out stadium, a coke party, torn throat muscles, urgent pleas from a doctor to rest, and the manager (Barry Keoghan) convincing The Weeknd to go on.
Jenna Ortega is seen at the beginning burning a house down, and you think maybe they’ve met before, but no—she’ll be front row at one his shows, one of his people will grab her, they’ll spend the night together, and… she thinks she’s coming along for the rest of the tour. All of a sudden, the movie becomes a riff on Misery, with Tesfaye tied to a bed and Ortega standing over him, pouring gasoline all over the place, having just killed Keoghan with a shard of glass. You see, she had a very fucked up childhood, and while this all conveyed in one brief speech and an even shorter phone call (with her mother, voiced by Riley Keough), you don’t get the sense that she’s a Single White Female type until Tesfaye mentions Australia and she says, “I’ve always wanted to go there.” Next thing you know, she’s knocked him out and tied him up.
The movie’s been widely panned, and it’s a bathetic piece of work, one that climaxes with a close-up of Tesfaye singing an apology (to Ortega? Rose Depp? Sam Levinson? HBO? The world?) But it’s not a movie without purpose: working in the checkered tradition of Glitter, Hearts of Fire, Masked and Anonymous, and Kazaam, Trey Edward Schultz has made his best movie yet; if that’s not saying much, keep in mind that his It Comes at Night was an unwatchable bore, while Hurry Up Tomorrow is a fascinating failure, filled to the brim with ego, bad ideas, too much money, and a solid score and set of songs by Tesfaye and Daniel Lopatin. Hurry Up Tomorrow isn’t a mark on The Idol, a very good show with FANTASTIC music (I largely saw this movie because “World Class Sinner” has been stuck in my head for two years) and great performances from Depp, Jane Adams, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, and Troye Sivan. Tesfaye sucked in it, but he was supposed to lose. In Hurry Up Tomorrow, he’s up for redemption, and even I’m not buying it.
Nevertheless, keep in mind that even Glitter has been reappraised—if sporadically—in the 24 years since its release ruined Mariah Carey’s career. Right now, it’s easy to imagine Tesfaye following the same slow slide into irrelevance; Hurry Up Tomorrow might be the last time you’ll be able to see him on the big screen.
—Follow Nicky Otis Smith on Twitter: @MonicaQuibbits