Review of After (2019) by Cinephilee — 13 Apr 2019

This movie is your typical good girl meets bad boy romance, so as for plot twists, can't say there were many. The acting was average at best, but it wasn't like the characters were exactly the most complex to portray, so I suppose the actors did their job.

In addition, the characters either fit complete stereotypes or simply did not have any personalities at all. Side note: I refuse to applaud Anna Todd for making the movie "diverse". She made Tristan a girl, which would have been interesting had Pia Mia been on the screen for more than 4 minutes.

Anyone else getting the same queerbaiting vibes as Riverdale? And representing the African American community with Landon wouldn't have been a problem had he had more duties than being the typical 'black best friend's stereotype.

The biggest thieves of the screens were the two main characters, Tessa and Hardin. The movie focused much more on the romance between them rather than them as individual people with separate stories and personalities.

For a movie that bragged about encouraging empowerment, they sure made Tessa seem dependent on Hardin and hinted at her being irrelevant without Hardin. I mean, a lot of romance movies are guilty of this, but still, it makes for some pretty unrelatable and boring characters, especially the female lead.

Another side note: Josephine Langford is an okay actress, however the producers should have told her that her Australian accent came through way too much and asked her to do the scene again. The editing was a bit odd, including a lot of shots of characters just staring at each other and extreme close ups of body parts and objects.

Jenny Gage was way too dependent on montages to save this film. In terms of plot, some of the character motives were lost in the fast-paced nature of the film. Believe me, it was incredibly too fast. This is something that happens a lot in book to film adaptations, since it is very difficult to cram what would be a 10 hour reading session in a 2 hour movie, but still, they could have tried a bit harder.

Instead of trying to stuff a film with new scenes that have zero relevance, this movie should have at least tried to include scenes from the book that may have been a waste of time as well but at least they weren't brought out of thin air.

This movie was, well, forgettable. Beyond average and disappointing.