The premise of Your idea This may sound familiar: a middle-aged mother/creative and a 20-something British boy bander fall in love, much to the chagrin of the media and fans. I am of course referring to the endlessly discussed romance between Harry Styles and Don’t worry, darling Director Olivia Wilde. However, the source material, Robinne Lee’s novel of the same name, dates from 2017 – years before Spitgate, Miss Flo and salad dressing Instagram Stories. But Styles inspired Lee to write the novel.
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The book gained its own loyal readers at the height of the pandemic, when Styles’ popularity skyrocketed. It follows the romance between 39-year-old Los Angeles art gallery owner and mother Solène and superstar Hayes Campbell.
With all the fuss about the similarities between the story and Styles and Wilde, fans of the book and lovers of beautiful people ran away the trailer The numbers for the film adaptation amount to a record-breaking 125 million views, making it the most viewed trailer for a streaming film to date.
Now that the film is coming to Prime Video, you might be wondering how much screenwriters Jennifer Westfeldt and Michael Showalter (who also directed) have deviated from the source material. Here are the biggest differences between Your ideanovel and film.
How much of it Your idea is inspired by Harry Styles?
In 2017, Lee told blogger Deborah Kalb: “I was up late browsing music videos on YouTube when I came across a boy’s face that I had never seen before in a band that I had never paid attention to, and it was aesthetically so perfect.”, it surprised me. It was like… art.” She told her husband about her newfound love and he encouraged him to write a book about it. Later, during the book’s pandemic resurgence — due in part to Styles’ skyrocketing popularity — Lee recounted Fashion on inspiring the love interest: “I made him my dream man, like Prince Harry meets Harry.” [Styles].”
Hayes has a “wide mouth, full lips, perfect teeth, dimples” and is covered in tattoos that scream, “This is how I spend my first ever big paycheck!” His boy band August Moon is a non-dancing quintet, tight black jeans wears, hangs around on stage and releases albums with questionable names Way from Naked. Sounds similar to a band that starts with “One” and ends with “Direction,” doesn’t it? The main difference is that August Moon is a “posh boy band” while the members of One Direction are all working class.
The film isn’t just about that Harry Elephant in the room, but Westfeldt and Showalter improve the book and turn it into something everyone can enjoy, not just horny Styles fans.
As the main characters get older, the fear decreases
In the book Hayes (bottoms’ (Nicholas Galitzine) and Solène (Anne Hathaway) meet for the first time when she takes her 12-year-old daughter Izzy to a meet-and-greet with his band August Moon in Las Vegas. Their secret affair spans about a dozen stops on the August Moon Tour, including Paris, Miami and the Hamptons. The book’s main conflicts are Solène’s guilt over abandoning her young daughter to have crazy sex with someone 20 years younger, and the stress that results from this The band’s fans and the media discover their relationship.
The adaptation fixes many of the book’s problems, such as Izzy’s obsession with Hayes and comments about Hayes being “barely legal”, by increasing Hayes and Izzy’s ages by four years, to 24 and 16, respectively. This immediately results in less conflict between Solène and Izzy (played by Ella Rubin), as Izzy doesn’t exactly have a crush on her mother’s famous boyfriend. Additionally, the film delves into several heartwarming scenes where the duo August Moon and King Princess sing along in the car together as they build their rock-solid mother-daughter bond.
Best friends!
Photo credit: Alisha Wetherill / Prime
The film also corrects course some of the classicism inherent in Lee’s book. For example, Lee wrote that the members of August Moon met at a feeder prep school in Oxford/Cambridge. In the book, Solène and Hayes agree about their “good upbringing.”
Showalter and Westfeldt knew that wouldn’t work in 2024. So they moved Solène’s life to Silver Lake rather than Malibu. Cutting out all the luxury brand name-dropping also makes Solène much more down-to-earth, although she’s still wealthy enough to take a week-long break from running her gallery. Hathaway’s natural charm underscores these changes. She transforms Solène into a quirky rom-com heroine who is impossible to resist.
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Your idea is not fanfiction; It’s a romantic comedy.
Showalter and Westfeldt turn a wish-fulfillment fantasy about the not-quite-Harry Styles fingering an older woman in a series of glamorous locations (Rome! Paris!) into a bona fide romantic comedy, which means a charming “meet-cute” is required. This requires a marked departure from the novel, in which Hayes and Solène meet at the table in Vegas, with their young daughter in tow.
In the book, During this brief encounter, Hayes asks Solène to bring her 12-year-old daughter and her friends to the boy band’s afterparty. It is later revealed that when he saw Solène in line for the meet-and-greet, he whispered in his bandmate’s ear: “I just want to fuck her in the mouth.”
The film takes a less seedy approach and overall sets up a nice meeting away from Izzy. In both the book and the film, Solène is not a fan of the boy band. She She only takes Izzy and her friends to meet August Moon because her cheating ex-husband loses his temper at the last minute. Due to the age change in the film, this gift is misguided, as 16-year-old Izzy now thinks August Moon is “like, in seventh grade.”
In the film, Solène storms into Hayes’ trailer – assuming it is the VIP toilet. And he’s so charmed by her that, in true 24-year-old fashion, he asks, “Do you want to hang out?” But he quickly catches up with his wardrobe team and she slips out the door. Just a few hours later they meet again at the fan event, where he flirts and bombards her with questions. During August Moon’s headlining set, Hayes announces, “I met someone tonight,” and dedicates the band’s song, “Closer,” to her.
Hayes Campbell is not Harry Styles fan fiction
Even though Hayes is still a Brit in the film with a patchwork of ill-advised tattoos, he’s definitely not Styles. Hayes’ characterization in the book is based on Styles’ beefed-up, fan-created persona often found in fan fiction. Luckily for viewers, Showalter and Westfeldt’s Hayes is very much his own boy bander. First of all, he can dance.
After Solène and Hayes finally have sex in the film, there is a cut to Hayes ordering chicken fingers from room service. In perhaps the film’s most charming scene, he dances around in his underwear with the Chicken Fingers, accompanied by Solène – something that would never happen in the book. Showalter and Westfeldt’s writing skills add an extra dimension to flat characters, and the charisma of their leads certainly doesn’t hurt.
Movie Hayes is a guy whose biggest fear is that he’ll fool people, not that he’ll give his DNA to an underage girl. Yes, that is a real conversation that Solène and Hayes have in the book.
Izzy finds out… and the ending is dramatically different.
The tumultuous romance between Solène and Hayes becomes complicated in both the book and the film when Izzy – and the world – learns about it.
In the book, Izzy freaks out when she finds out about Solène and Hayes because she’s 12 and thinks she’s in love with him. In the film, Hayes isn’t even Izzy’s favorite of the August Moon boys. After much comfort and Izzy moving in with her father, she accepts the relationship between Solène and Hayes, but is bullied at school.
The exact same incident is the turning point for Solène in the book and the film: a group of older girls asks Izzy for a photo of Hayes’ “dick,” and her crush asks her to “tell her mother he’s almost 18.” After a final rendezvous with Hayes in Japan, Solène finally breaks off and returns to her life in the gallery and with Izzy.
In the film, this older Izzy is more supportive. News of their romance breaks the day Solène picks up Izzy from summer camp – after Solène has already broken up with Hayes. Izzy is disappointed that Solène lied to her, but quickly forgives her. She even encourages her mother to give Hayes another chance, urging, “Why would you break up with a talented, kind feminist?!”
However, the harassment of both Solène and Izzy by Hayes’ rabid fan base and Izzy’s classmates – which is the same as in the book – becomes too much for their family. Solène breaks off with Hayes again. However, he suggests that in five years, when Izzy is in college and “living her best life,” they will give their romance another chance.
While in the book Solène has to choose between her love life and the well-being of her child, the film does not force her into such a corner. The novel contains many crude comments about the invisibility of older women and ends with the heroine returning to a quiet life to protect herself and her family.
The film rejects this theme of invisibility, perhaps because Hathaway (who also produces) is far from it. All of the book’s attempts to convey a late 19th-century feminist message are undermined by the mother-claiming ending tilt to have everything. But the ending of the film defies the idea that mothers have to choose between their happiness and the happiness of their children. You can give your daughter a (famous) husband and a stable childhood – at least in the cinema.
Your idea will debut on Amazon Prime Video on May 2nd.