10 Best Movies Named After Popular Songs
Nice title, how about we borrow it?
Last Christmas, the affably cliché-ridden winter romcom from Paul Feig and Emma Thompson, can currently be seen in cinemas touting its "inspired by the music of George Michael" credit.
In truth, although the film takes its name from Wham!'s evergreen festive fave, the film isn't much related to Michael's music. Its decision to interpret the song's lyrics in terms of a heart transplant from a dead guy has the same morbid literalism as My Girl using the Temptations lyric "I've got so much honey the bees envy me" as a prompt to kill Macaulay Culkin with bee stings.
Still, both Last Christmas and My Girl have adopted a tried and tested titling formula: simply piggy-back on the existing good will and name recognition of a popular musical hit and you've instantly got yourself a greater share of audience interest.
Back in 1999 for example, the novel How I Created My Perfect Prom Date was adapted as the utterly forgettable Melissa Joan Hart teen romcom Next To You. One quick title change and a music video cameo later, however, and the movie became Drive Me Crazy and managed to bag a whole bunch of Britney Spears's devoted teen fanbase despite having next to nothing to do with her beyond the title.
Drive Me Crazy was still a bad movie, but there are other times when the pop song titling method has sold a film every bit as good as the song to which it's vaguely related. Here are the ten best examples.
10. The Edge Of Seventeen
Kelly Fremon Craig's directorial debut, a coming of age comedy-drama about a troubled high school girl, was based on a spec script Craig had written named Besties, which got picked up after Craig took a chance and sent a copy to James L. Brooks and the Oscar-winning director and Simpsons producer loved it.
That generic sounding title, however, was swapped out for the more evocative one with which it would come to cinemas. Taken from the title of Stevie Nicks's 1982 single Edge Of Seventeen (Just Like The White Winged Dove), a song inspired by the death of John Lennon, Craig's film does engage with some of the song's themes of loss and loneliness, but the song makes no appearance in the movie. Its soundtrack relies more on contemporary indie pop from the likes of The 1975 and Miike Snow.
A poignant, realistic and well-observed script alongside an engaging central performance from Hailee Steinfeld that shows why she has become one of Hollywood's most in demand rising stars makes The Edge Of Seventeen stand out from the coming of age drama crowd, whatever your particular musical era.
Whether helped by the familiarity of the song from which it takes its title or not, The Edge Of Seventeen was a moderate but unspectacular success on release in 2016, but has inspired an upcoming YouTube spinoff series.