So it’s 2024 and here I am, watching a new Meg Ryan rom-com, What Happens Later (now streaming on Paramount+ with Showtime). The one-time hands-down dominant Godzilla-like presence of the genre isn’t just starring in this one, but also co-writing and directing it – and surely making sure that it’s aware of its own existence as a retro-throwback of a movie in which two aging veteran stars (David Duchovny is the other one) deliver the bittersweet sense that time has passed in a rather profound way. But does it work, this self-referential story of two exes bumping into each other decades later in a place that could very well be Purgatory Itself? Sometimes. And yeah, that’s vague, but that’s why there are more words below these words to unvagueify the assertion.
The Gist: Two CGI snowflakes drift and dawdle on the screen, simultaneously literal and symbolic. Literally, they and several jillion of their snowflake pals are forcing all flights to an airport in a conspicuously unnamed locale. Symbolically, the two flakes are Willamena Davis (Ryan) and William Davis (Duchovny), two adult human beings who apparently misinterpreted what the universe was telling them 20, maybe 25 years ago, thinking that such nomenclatorial kismet meant they should be a couple instead of not be a couple. Things ended poorly, of course. Just prior to their reunion is when Bill finds an electronic screen advertising a movie called Rom Com – tagline: “Fall in love with love again” – and unplugs it so he can charge his phone. Read: This movie, the one you’re watching, with the appropriately generic throwbacky title What Happens Later, is definitely a rom-com, but it’s not quite like the ones Meg Ryan headlined 30-odd years ago.
And so on the newly darkened movie advertisement screen is where Bill sees a reflection of Willa. He pretends not to. She spots him and does the same. But alas and alack, they can’t avoid each other. All flights have been grounded indefinitely and this is a small airport and what are they going to do, spend hours and hours ducking and dodging and holding up newspapers and hiding behind potted plants like idiots? No, it’s better that they do the mature thing and acknowledge each other and spend the rest of the movie by turns sparring in a lightly humorous manner and happily-slash-sadly reminiscing about how things were and how they could’ve been.
So, who are these people? Willa establishes herself as a flighty New Ager because A) her carry-on luggage is a rain stick and B) she points out to Bill that it’s Leap Day, which handily explains this crazy situation and all the heightened-reality shtickiness that subsequently occurs. Bill, meanwhile, is far more pragmatic, a businessman doing business things for business travel. We soon learn that she’s the rule breaker and he’s the rule follower, and while the yin-yang dynamic works for some couples, it didn’t work for them. They do the small-talk thing and then comment on the small talk by saying how they always used to make fun of people who engaged in small talk, and then they start rehashing dusty arguments from the 1990s, complete with references to Soundgarden concerts and Ye Olde Partridge Family CD Incident. So much time has passed. I mean, really? CDs? Time flies and the world is passing them by and the difference between then and now is, they notice it.
At about this point, the Airport earns its capitalization because it becomes a character complete with an audible voice, namely, the overhead announcements on the PA. The Airport seems to know what’s up with the two W. Davises – that’s what they still call each other, W. Davis, terms of endearment – and delivers updates about “checking your connections” and how “everything is pending.” The Airport is a puckish poet with a firm grasp on metaphor, exquisite comic timing and a desire to drive our protagonists mad with muzak, it seems. Or the Airport might be god, and our protagonists are trapped in the Boarding Area of Existential Doom, where individuals of a certain vintage are forced to self-reflect before they venture to the next plane. Get it? Plane? Would you like to shoot me now or wait til we get home? (Shoot me now! Shoot me now!)
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: What Happens Later is like Before Sunrise for aging Gen Xers who remember the living christ outta the ’90s — which isn’t to say it’s a profound Linklateresque examination of the passage of time, exactly, but there is slightly more to it than your average rom-com.
Performance Worth Watching: Ryan has not forgotten how to tap into the charismatic sort-of-ditzy charm that worked so well in Sally’s Got Seattle Mail and all those movies that helped define the late-20th-century rom-com.
Memorable Dialogue: Are we laughing or eyerolling at this stuff?
The Airport: Attention travelers. The National Weather Service has identified the storm as a bomb cyclone.
Both W. Davises at the same time: Bomb cyclone?
The Airport: Yes.
Sex and Skin: None.
Our Take: I don’t know about this. Ryan’s screen presence is still wholly intact, and she shows good push-and-pull chemistry with Duchovny. But their dynamic isn’t as magical as the movie wants it to be, especially in this unreality of a setting – a setting that’s very intentionally unreal, where all the other people in the airport never utter a word and merely pass through the background, and the Airport Voice Guy brings some of the subtext into the text. The conceit is gimmicky and annoying and clever all at the same time, and suggests that the dramedy occurs in a dream state or heaven or hell or whatever you want it to be. Or maybe the easier answer is – and I firmly believe this is Ryan’s intention – it occurs in a rom-com, and nobody should ever recognize a rom-com as something that reflects reality.
Yet the smartest component of What Happens Later is the implication that these two people, who are really starting to feel their age, and are beginning to understand the emotional dangers of nostalgia, understand that they may never get true closure on what happened between them. It was tumultuous of course, and it clearly reverberates through their lives even now. They’re older and wiser but their lives aren’t any less messy, and getting answers to long-unasked questions only further complicates their feelings. This is where the film elevates above its contrivances – you won’t be at all surprised to learn that both characters are working through difficult times, and it takes a bit before they overcome their reluctance to share their pain with each other – and becomes ever so slightly greater than the sum of its gimmicky, overly cutesy parts. Ryan works to balance the exploration of the characters’ pain with the whimsical setting, and it works more than it doesn’t. The difference between rom-coms then and this rom-com now is, it’s very much aware of its contrivances, and that’s not nothing.
Our Call: It must be said that What Happens Later will not be tenable at all for anyone who’s too young to have seen Meg Ryan films in the theater during her rom-com peak. Its teeth are a little sharper for its target audience, who might STREAM IT and find it at least slightly enjoyable and insightful.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.