Here's a big-time Hollywood name you haven't heard in a while... Meg Ryan!
The once "queen of the rom-com" is back in theaters with her own take on the genre she helped define... with movies like "When Harry Met Sally, " "You've Got Mail," "Sleepless in Seattle," or, "What Happens Later."
That's the title of this movie she co-wrote, directed, and stars in opposite David Duchovny as ex-lovers who see each other for the first time in years when they're stranded at an airport overnight.
Although I'm all too happy to welcome Ryan back to the big screen, I wish it was under better circumstances. But if you want to pay good money to watch people basically talking for almost two hours, well... you've come to the right place!
Too bad they didn't have something better to say. I hope they were well paid for delivering some of this dialog, so obviously loaded I wonder if they were in on the joke... or, so over-loaded with supposed depth and meaning that it's almost too clever by half; hinted at by even the poster's tagline: "They missed their connection."
Get it? No really, do you get the multiple layers of it?
Don't worry if you don't. It'll all be spelled out for you repeatedly and in various ways. Like by Duchovny, who - get this! Unplugs an advertisement for a generic rom-com at the start of this movie which means to subvert the usual rom-com...
Or by him giving Meg Ryan a charging cable at the end of the movie and saying that she "has her power back." (Ugh).
Or usually by the airport announcer who will absolutely hand you the moral of every story in a way that tried to be otherworldly like in say, the narrative quirks of "LA Story," but it just came off as out of place in a movie that is so otherwise grounded (Ha! Get it? Grounded! At an airport! I should be a script doctor!). Odd and embarrassing, especially when Duchovny and Ryan have to interact with the magical announcer.
It doesn't improve by its ending, falling on its face while attempting to avert a trope. Eye rolls will get any bigger than in the last few seconds of this pretty average rom-com that's short on rom and bereft of com. But at least it has a completely unnecessary "R" rating for language, mainly, possibly in an attempt to not appear too light-weight.
So "What Happens Later?"
I think you'll wish you'd seen a different movie.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt19890316/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_8_nm_0_q_what%2520ha
