Hot on the heels of the controversial 2024 erotic thriller “Miller’s Girl” landing on Netflix — causing lead Martin Freeman to offer a fresh defense of the movie and the age gap between him and his 31-years-younger co-star, Jenna Ortega — comes another movie built upon a May-December romance.

However, we expect no such fervor over the relatively tame “The Idea of You,” an Amazon MGM Studios release debuting this week on Prime Video.

For starters, the age gap is roughly half of that of the “Miller’s Girl”: Anne Hathaway’s Solène is freshly 40, while Nicholas Galitzine’s Hayes is 24.

And this is no erotic thriller, but instead a romance, albeit one with a couple of admirable moments of striking but authentic-feeling intimacy.

However, despite an excellent performance by Hathaway as the Los Angeles art gallery director and divorced mom, the adaptation of Robinne Lee’s novel falls a little flat.

It is the rare miss — and, to be fair, at most a minor miss — from director and co-writer Michael Showalter, whose impressive list of films includes “The Big Sick,” “The Lovebirds” and “Spoiler Alert.”

The setup is hokey but cute, Solène meeting Hayes at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival when she mistakes his trailer for a VIP restroom.

You see, she’s there because her cocky-but-flaky ex-husband, Daniel (Reid Scott of “Veep”), bowed out at the last minute, choosing business over taking their teen daughter, Izzy (Ella Rubin), and her friends to the fest. The big draw — more for Izzy’s friends than her, as she’s now into female singer-songwriters with something to say — is the boy band August Moon, of which Hayes is a member.

Hayes, a boy band singer and celebrity portrayed by Nicholas Galitzine, meets Anne Hathaway’s gallery owner Solène in a scene from “The Idea of You.” (Courtesy of Amazon Content Services)

Once Hayes clues Solène into who he is and finds out why she’s there, he attempts to confirm Izzy is a fan.

“She was,” Solène says.

“Ouch,” he says, listening further as she quotes her daughter saying the band is “so seventh-grade.”

Soon, there’s a VIP meet-and-greet, with the pair getting a few more chances to exchange glances as Izzy and pals snag autographs and pics with the band, followed by a performance during which Hayes makes an apparent change to the setlist so he can sing a song for someone he met on this day.

The fictional boy band August Moon performs in a scene from “The Idea of You.” (Courtesy of Amazon Content Services)

Solène seems to enjoy this little injection of some excitement into her life but figures that is that — until Hayes shows up in her gallery in Silver Lake under the auspices of needing to furnish a London apartment. (How much does he want to impress her? He buys EVERYTHING.)

Next thing you know, they’re fleeing to her house to escape overly enthusiastic fans who’ve tracked him to the gallery. At her piano, we get a taste of that aforementioned intimacy, but Solène eventually slams on the breaks.

Hayes, however, has a few moves up his sleeves in the days ahead, and, before she knows it, Solène is being whisked around another continent with Hayes, the other band members and their (much younger) female acquaintances.

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Can they avoid unwanted media attention? Can the world just let these two be happy together? (Um, no and no.)

The screenplay, by Showalter and “Kissing Jessica Stein” writer, director and star Jennifer Westfeldt, is of the herky-jerky variety, with Solene jumping all in and pulling back out a bit too often for the movie to find a real groove. Moments of real happiness (Wang Chung hotel room karaoke!) quickly give way to intense heartache (the mean Internet). And back and forth we go!

Again, though, Hatheway (“Les Misérables,” “Interstellar”) is in ultra-fine form, oozing with all the emotions Solène experiences, Galitzine (“Mary & George,” “Red, White & Royal Blue”) isn’t in the same class. He can sing and play guitar and piano, so he checks the role’s boy band-related boxes, but he struggles to make us feel Hayes’ intense need for Solène. Sure, these are two attractive people, so it’s not as if they’re not at all believable together, but the chemistry isn’t where it needs to be.

Nevertheless, you cannot simply dismiss the movie as another ho-hum romance as, like some of the musical artists Izzy now appreciates, it has something to offer from a feminist perspective — commentary about how the happiness of a woman tends to be prioritized by others less than what is expected of her.

Still, the idea of “The Idea of You” is better than the film itself.

‘The Idea of You’

Where: Prime Video.

When: May 2.

Rated: R for some language and sexual content.

Runtime: 1 hour, 57 minutes.

Stars (of four): 2.

David Festa tied the Saints’ single-game strikeout record with 10, and pitched into the fifth in the first time at the Class AAA level, but St. Paul fell to Louisville on Tuesday, 7-5, in front of 4,636 at CHS Field.

Patrick Winkel hit a grand slam in the Saints’ five-run first inning, but Louisville right-hander Lyon Richardson followed with four scoreless innings, and five bats relievers combined to shut out St. Paul for the final four innings. Righty Brooks Kriske (3-0) pitched two-thirds of the sixth inning, fanning one, to earn the win.

Festa, the Twins’ fifth-rated prospect according to MLB.com, surrendered two runs on three hits and a walk in five innings. The right-hander struck out the side in the first on the way to 10 strikeouts, tying the Saints’ single-game record set by Twins reliever Griffin Jax on May 28, 2021, at Iowa.

Making his second rehab appearance, Justin Topa started the sixth inning by hitting Blake Dunn, who stole second and scored on a single to right by Rese Hinds to pull Louisville within 5-3. Topa gave up three runs on three hits and a walk and was charged with a blown save.

Dunn’s RBI single in the seventh scored the go-ahead run.

The teams meet in the second game of a six-game series Wednesday at 6:37 p.m. Right-hander Joe Gunkel (0-3, 8.47 ERA) is scheduled to start for the Saints.

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Chris Marquette and Michael Macagnone | CQ-Roll Call (TNS)

WASHINGTON — A deep unease trickled through Jacob Glick’s entire body. He had started a virtual deposition of Jim Watkins, the large, scruffy QAnon conspiracy theorist who runs 8kun, a website filled with hateful, racist content that included calls for violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Glick, then an investigative counsel for the House select committee probing the Jan. 6 attack, made the customary introductions of his colleagues. Watkins jotted down all the names.

“It already felt creepier — and I’ve been in some creepy ones,” Glick said.

Glick was among the staff on the now-disbanded Jan. 6 panel who say their work exposed them to threats, raised doubts about their safety and required additional safety precautions. Their experiences, recounted in interviews, serve as a high-profile example of concerns among Capitol Hill staffers about whether their work could make them a target for political violence.

At one point during the deposition, Watkins told Glick that his website typically got 300,000 to 3 million visits in a day, but it would spike the day of the deposition. Glick asked why and got a chilling response.

“Because they know I’m talking to you,” Watkins said with a grin.

Glick calmly responded, “Got it.” But he said inside he felt “terrified” thinking about what could happen to him and his family as the target of supporters of the pro-Trump rioters who stormed the Capitol. He wondered about conspiracy theorists.

“As a gay Jewish lawyer who works for Jamie Raskin, am I all of the sudden going to become this linchpin of QAnon?” Glick said.

Glick said he was overcome with fear for his partner and whether his address was available to the public — and he still thinks about it.

“I had a moment of real panic where I wondered what kind of storyline I was going to be,” he said.

The committee eventually decided to use part of Glick’s exchange with Watkins in one of its public hearings exhibiting that followers of the former president felt Donald Trump wanted them to come to the Capitol on Jan. 6.

The prospect of his face being shown in such a high-profile hearing injected a jolt of terror into Glick, but he said he was committed to telling the full story of what happened.

Members of the select committee and staff were exposed to a unique barrage of threats as they were conducting their work. The chairman, Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., had a police officer stationed outside of his home and still travels with security.

“Obviously since Jan. 6 and my tenure on the committee it has continued to escalate,” Thompson said. “There’s a constant beat of threats.”

But that also happened with some staffers, such as Sandeep Prasanna, who also had to have added security precautions implemented.

A militia member who was subpoenaed by the panel, when they found out Prasanna was conducting the deposition, posted several details, including that Prasanna is gay and a person of color. And over at Georgetown University Law Center, where Prasanna taught as an adjunct professor, a university police officer had to be stationed at his classroom because the class schedule was publicly available.

Other members of the panel’s team of investigators, James Sasso and Marcus Childress, had one of their work emails published on Gateway Pundit, a far-right website.

The staffers had been reaching out to lawyers representing Jan. 6 rioters who pleaded guilty, seeking to interview their clients. The website falsely claimed it as evidence the committee was extorting witnesses.

“I walked into work and my inbox was just flooded with all sorts of email messages from random people calling me a Nazi, calling me a Pelosi stooge, socialist, a lot of other things that the far-right would say about who they perceive to be liberals,” Sasso said. “Telling me to go look into Hunter Biden’s laptop. Calling me dumb.”

That was significant enough for Sasso to give the email addresses to someone on the Jan. 6 panel who managed those threats and worked with Capitol Police. Sasso for some time got emails daily from some of those people.

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Sasso said he leaned on the support of his colleagues, particularly the close-knit group of investigators. They supported him through the hate mail, assuring Sasso his wife would be fine and that most people making threats wouldn’t act and were sitting in a basement somewhere.

That didn’t mean Sasso wasn’t highly attuned to his surroundings when he left the office for home with a sense of anxiety about who might be lurking. He said he “did have those moments of terror and being careful when I went home, making sure no one was really following me.”

“The thought crosses your mind. What if this is the day someone is following me and does something about it?” Sasso said.

Even long after the panel disbanded, Glick still has moments he has to grapple with in the wake of hate directed at him from his work.

Watkins posted personal information he said was tied to Glick, who still struggles with the fact that he is a “bogeyman for one of the scariest men on the internet.”

Sasso’s experience has him questioning what long-term impact such a threat environment will have on the country’s democracy.

“How well can a democracy function if people are afraid to serve in office?” Sasso asked. “Who is going to want to do this thankless job if there’s a ton of heavily armed people willing to come after their families?”

This is part of an occasional series that touches on the safety of congressional staffers and threats to congressional offices.

The post They staffed the Jan. 6 committee. Threats still follow them appeared first on Roll Call.

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