Five things that would have made the Mum Bait Harry Styles fan fic movie better

The Idea of You was close, but no cigar.

CONTENT WARNING: Do not read if talking about sex offends you. If you don’t like a bit of crude humour, you will not like this post.

The Idea of You is the latest fan-fic turned Mum Bait movie to land on our streaming services. After multiple people messaged me about it, in a furious/horny state - I knew I had to watch it. Here’s what I thought.

“I’m too old for you” Solène gasps into the neck of Harry Styles Hayes Campbell.

“No you’re not” he gasps back.

“I could be your mother” she gasps.

Look, there’s a lot of gasping OK?

“But you’re not” he gasps back.

This my friends, is Mum Bait. And it has many of us thrashing around like exhausted, overworked and mostly invisible trout caught hook, line and sinker.

It’s a pivotal scene in The Idea of You, the latest erotica-slash-fan-fic turned straight-to-streaming movie. It sets up the classic Mum Bait protagonist - A hot Mum who is a people pleaser and has a shitty asshole ex-husband - with a glorious young himbo who just wants to give her multiple orgasms and expensive clothes.

Whomst could ask for more?!

Well me it turns out. In fact I have five ways I think the film could have been improved.

First, a crumb of context for you (and no spoilers):

The Idea of You stars Anne Hathaway, looking impossibly hot as usual, and Nicholas Galitzine, last seen plowing the King of England in Mary & George. It is quite clearly Harry Styles erotica.

Solène Marchand is an art gallery owner who has people saying they love the way she’s “built a community around art and inclusiveness” unironically. She’s 40 with a 15 year-old daughter and an ex-husband who lives with the dull bore he cheated on her with. Hayes is in a boy band called August Moon which looks and sounds exactly like One Direction. He has a dainty little earring, tattoos, and just enough childhood trauma to make him interesting but not like…difficult. He is beautiful and simple and apparently quite adept at finger banging.

They meet at Coachella and Solène resists Himbo Hayes’ advances for far longer than I would have. What matters next, doesn’t really matter.

Firstly, let’s address the main question all of you are heating up my DMs with: Is there enough sex in it?

There is sadly, not enough sex. But there is a good fingering scene. As someone who has long advocated for more fingering in mainstream movies I cannot complain at all about this development. And in pure Mum Bait protocol, she climaxes first (in literally seconds, so I’d like to know exactly what he did…for research purposes).

I won’t give away the ending - and I will admit I haven’t read the book. But I am willing to give The Idea of You high marks for simply being a film that is in service to mums and horny women everywhere. My understanding is that it’s quite different to the book, including Hayes’ age which was 20 in the book. This is great, because God knows a 20-year-old is still learning not to jackhammer a woman’s cervix during coitus. 24 is feasibly old enough for a cis man to be maybe good in bed (optimistic but possible).

But, it definitely could be improved.

And given I have spent the last decade giving advice to Hollywood that a) has largely been ignored and b) is mostly about making Alexander Skarsgard naked in more films - I will say how The Idea of You fell over:

1. Anne Hathaway is not mum enough. There’s not a single scene where you actually believe she’s a mum like you’re a mum or I’m a mum. And yes, I know that she is literally a mom. She has children. But that’s not enough. Not once does she have a messy bun. Not once does she seem frazzled. Not once does she eat ice cream standing in front of the fridge or chow down on a packet of chips while standing in saggy underwear in front of her pantry. The closest we get to #Mumlife a messy car. Her daughter never once slams her door and says ‘you’ve ruined my life’ because she asks her to clean her room.

2. You would not know Anne Hathaway is 40 unless you looked up her Wikipedia page. Look, I’m almost 40 and I look at least 35 years older than Anne Hathaway. She wears a strapless dress to work. She at one point pretends she can’t wear a bikini when we have literally seen her in her bikini and she has a flatter stomach than her daughter. If the age gap is part of the story - show the age gap properly.

3. And I’m not ganging up on Anne - she’s a brilliant actress. I’m just saying that it’s not believable that she’s not regularly getting nailed constantly by literally anyone because she’s so hot. She takes her make-up off in one scene and she looks literally perfect. I’m just saying, some of us are ugly and we need a bit of ugly if we’re going to superimpose our own faces and vaginas onto a protagonists’ face and vagina.

4. More fucking. Look, we actually are here in this case for the storyline (unlike Tarzan, Aquaman, The Viking) but, you must know that we need more than bisexual lighting and some soft gasping. I am imploring directors to recognise that nobody wants to see thrusting more than a mother who has been woken up six times by her child and hasn’t slept in the same bed as her husband for four years. And if the film is about the sexual liberation of a woman who has always put her family first SHOW THE SEXual liberation. If you’re not going to show thrusting - show sweat like they do in The Challengers.

5. If you’re not going to show banging, you’ve got to get better dialogue. The Idea of You absolutely beats it over your head that they have an age gap. He literally sings a song about how he has the horn for older women with the inspiring lyrics: I know you’re a little bit older / But baby rest your head on my shoulder /Before it gets a little bit colder. I mean, that’s going to dry you up. I recognise not every film can have a Mark Ruffalo from In The Cut saying: ‘I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees’. But we are going to need some dirty talk that doesn’t involve reminding you that a human once came out of you.

Should you still watch it despite my critiques? Yes. The world feels like it’s ending some days and this was a nice light watch. But truly, we can and must do better when it comes to horny films for mums. I believe in a future where there will be more mum bait and it will be so painfully arousing you’ll need to take regular breaks. I believe we can get there, if we just commit fully to providing pure unadulterated mum bait.