The Reel Review
25 years after their break-up, two ex-lovers bump into one another at a small Midwestern airport where a snowstorm has stranded them overnight, giving them an opportunity to reconcile their past. Meg Ryan and David Duchovny star in this romcom that Ryan also directed and co-wrote.
If What Happens Later feels less like a movie and more like a stage play, it is because it is an adaptation of Steven Dietz’s play Shooting Star. After an awkward initial reunion, we see the two quickly slip into manic bickering during their post-relationship analysis – with Ryan’s free spirited character an (unintentional?) parody of her popular roles in When Harry Met Sally and You’ve Got Mail, and Duchovny playing the hardened, strait-laced, all business kind of guy. The dialogue is unrealistic and there is zero chemistry between these two. And why is there no one else in this airport?
The chief problems with the poorly written What Happens Later, however, are that nothing really happens, there are too many wildly implausible moments, and it isn’t even remotely funny. While its nice to see Ryan back in the game, lets hope she sticks to acting after this deeply unlikable, tedious disaster.
REEL FACTS
• What Happens Later is Meg Ryan’s first acting role in eight years and second time as a director, after 2015’s Ithaca.
• Ryan dedicated the film to the late romcom writer Nora Ephron (When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle, You’ve Got Mail), who died at age 71 in 2012 from pneumonia as a complication of leukemia.
• What Happens Later was filmed at Northwest Arkansas National Airport and the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas.
Video & Photo
