The Greatest Hits: A 2026 Look Back at Music, Time Travel, and Grief

I still remember the first time I watched the trailer for The Greatest Hits. It was 2024, and I was half-distracted by a game on my second monitor when Lucy Boynton’s Harriet put on headphones and the world around her seemed to fold in on itself. The film, written and directed by Ned Benson, arrived with a premise that felt tailor-made for anyone who has ever used a song to summon a ghost: certain music can send Harriet back in time. That is not just a gimmick. It is a wound. The trailer immediately raised the stakes by revealing that her ex-boyfriend Max, played by David Corenswet, died in a car wreck. Harriet can potentially reverse his fate, but doing so might mean they never meet at all. That impossible trade-off is the engine of the movie, and it is why I kept thinking about it long after the credits rolled. 🎧

Now, in 2026, The Greatest Hits plays like a bridge between the streaming romances of the early 2020s and the more emotionally ambitious genre hybrids that followed. It premiered at SXSW, arrived on Hulu on March 14, 2024, and runs a tight 87 minutes. It is PG-13, blending comedy, drama, and fantasy. But the tone is not whimsical for its own sake. Benson, who also wrote and directed The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby and has a story credit on 2021’s Black Widow, uses time travel as a metaphor for grief’s refusal to stay in the past. Harriet is not trying to save the world. She is trying to save one person, and maybe herself. That small scale is the film’s greatest strength.

Justin H. Min enters as another grief-stricken artistic soul. His character does not compete with Max so much as he complicates Harriet’s idea of moving forward. Their bond is gentle, tentative, and musical. The trailer shows them nuzzling noses, sharing earbuds, and circling each other with the caution of people who have been hurt before. Meanwhile, Corenswet’s Max haunts the story as both memory and possibility. The love triangle is not really a triangle. It is a timeline problem. Every song Harriet plays is a door, and every door threatens to close another. 💔

I have followed Lucy Boynton since The Politician, where she was part of a sharp ensemble, and since Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?, where she starred opposite Will Poulter. She also had a brief but memorable appearance in Barbie as Proust Barbie. The Greatest Hits gives her something those roles did not: a full emotional arc carried on her face and in her silence. If the movie had become a theatrical phenomenon, I think it could have been her breakout lead performance. Even as a Hulu release, it gave her a showcase that streaming audiences could find on their own terms. In 2026, that matters more than ever. A film does not need a $100 million opening to become part of the conversation. It needs a hook, a performance, and a song that refuses to leave your head. 🎬

Comparable titles prove the appetite is real. The reference article pointed to Rachel McAdams’ time travel romances The Time Traveler’s Wife and About Time, as well as Palm Springs and Prey. Here is how I see those precedents in 2026:

The box office history of these movies is not a guarantee, but it is a signal. The crossover between science fiction and romance has a loyal audience. The Greatest Hits does not need to be the biggest movie of its year. It needs to be the right movie for people who have ever made a playlist for someone they lost. That is a specific audience, but it is not a small one. 📺

Watching it again in 2026, I am struck by how much the film trusts music to do narrative work. Songs are not just needle drops. They are transportation devices. They are memory triggers. They are the closest thing we have to time travel in real life. I have felt that myself, scrolling through old tracks and suddenly being seventeen again, standing in a room I have not seen in years. The Greatest Hits takes that feeling and builds a story around it. Harriet’s power is not a superpower in the comic-book sense. It is a heightened version of what all of us do when we press play on the past. 🎵

Would I change the past if I could? The movie asks that question without pretending there is an easy answer. Saving Max might erase the version of Harriet who met someone new. Letting him go might be the only way to live. That tension gives the film its bittersweet pull. It is a romance, yes, but it is also a story about accepting that some songs end. The best ones echo anyway. ⏳

Final thoughts: The Greatest Hits may not have been the biggest release of 2024, but in 2026 it remains a smart, tender, and surprisingly durable time travel romance. Lucy Boynton carries it. Justin H. Min and David Corenswet give her two different kinds of longing to play against. Ned Benson keeps the rules simple and the emotions messy. If you missed it on Hulu, it is worth finding now. Just be careful with the soundtrack. You might end up somewhere you did not plan to go. 💫