Here's this movie in a nutshell: Anne Hathaway portrays a beautiful, vivacious 40-year-old divorced mom who improbably finds herself in a genuine, passionate, happy and monogamous romantic relationship with a 24 year old celebrity who headlines one of the most popular bands in the world. When this comes to light, basically everyone around her gives her a hard time for it and complains incessantly about the impact it has on their lives (her teen daughter included) until she agrees to give up her lover for 5 years to kick the can down the road. Even more improbably, after 5 years (where I guess each of them was just miserable and alone for the whole time for no reason other than the selfishness of everyone around them) they reunite and resume a relationship again. Do writers who put huge absences in romantic stories have any idea the toll these would take on actual people? The pain, mental drain, emotional hardship? It's like they think it's cute. No one would wait five years of no contact and then easily say, welp, we're back together. That distance would wreck any original feelings anyone had and almost everyone would get tired of being alone and would have moved on. It's preposterous. Not to mention, we're supposed to be delighted that the two main characters basically sacrifice all their happiness for a huge chunk of time just so that everyone else can feel good. Nice that no one around them wanted to rally to help them stay together and work it out so everyone could have some joy. The whole thing just made me angry and depressed. Wish I'd skipped it.
Review of The Idea of You
