Freya Ridings: You Mean the World to Me (2019 Music Video) User Reviews

Could have worked as a film, as a music video not really

[Horst_In_Translation · 4/10 · 13 May 2019]

Here we have the 2019 music video for the song "You Mean the World to Me" recorded by Freya Ridings and you also see the artist on several occasions in this one. But she is not the reason why this is somewhat known. The real reason is that this was directed by lena Headey, her only filmmaking credit behind the camera, and the main character is played by Maisie Williams, also already in her 20s now. Well, even I as somebody who couldn't care less about Game of Thrones, knows that this is the show that made these two famous, especially Williams, so maybe it is a particularly good watch for fans of the show. But maybe also for others, if you manage to like the song here. I must say I did not really like the singer's voice and also it may have been a better idea for her to stay out of the video visually completely. I found her to be interrupting the otherwise fairly solid visual side and story. I would almost say it is too good for 3.5 minutes and with a completely different approach, this could have been a truly solid live action short film, maybe even a full feature film with the song used in here playing only for the closing credits. But they took a different route and I think the way it actually turned out it is a bit of a missed opportunity. Not a failure though, nothing about these sligthly over 200 seconds is really bad, nothing involving Ridings either. But it is also not good enough for a positive recommendation in my opinion. Gotta give this one a thumbs-down all in all. Still, if you wanna check it out nonetheless, go for the music video, not just the record as the video clearly elevates the audio, even if I am not sure what Ridings was thinking really including these big name actors. Maybe overshadow her lack of vocal range? I don't know. But I do know that I hope Headey will direct more in the future. i've seen way worse rookie efforts from really famous directors.