WHAT HAPPENS LATER - Movie Review

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Title: WHAT HAPPENS LATER

Yeah. Chick Flick. Sometimes you just gotta take one for the team.

Two ex-lovers happen to meet in a rural airport during a blizzard after 25 years and spend a day showing the audience why they never would have worked out and it's a good thing for humanity that they broke up.

An unrecognizable Meg Ryan (Plastic Surgery) and a dry deadpan David Duchovny cross paths and we are subjected to an hour and 43 minute therapy session as they slowly accept the truth regarding the end of their relationship. Duchovny is a neurotic conservative businessman and Ryan is a neurotic liberal hippie who helps people free their chakras and even when over 50, is still clueless as to how the world works.

As the story progresses, we learn that Bill (Duchovny) left Willa (Ryan) after Willa announced that she wanted an "open relationship" and Bill couldn't handle Willa screwing around. We also learn that the two of them almost had a child together, but there was a miscarriage. Without going further into the disaster that was their relationship, let's just say that all they accomplish is getting some closure before heading out to continue their separate lives.

The only good part of the movie is the Airport Announcer, who injects some humor into an otherwise dry movie. That and pointing out all of the continuity errors (Example: Duchovny's shirt alternates between tucked and untucked with wonton abandon within the same scene, items are constantly left behind only to reappear later, the airport oscillates between being completely empty and full of other people as we are supposed to believe that dozens of flights have been delayed. The list goes on. Whoever edited this film should never work again.) This was directed by Meg Ryan as well. She and Duchovny have zero chemistry on the screen and, as my wife commented, it looked like the entire movie was completed in less than a week. There are three screenwriters and 8 producers listed in the credits and one wonders why.

Fun: Not really. They could have had a great "Luke and Laura" moment while being trapped in an empty airport, but squandered it.

Preachy: In order to be preachy, a movie has to have some underlying plot element. In this movie, the only message is "Don't date a woman who can't get her own shit together." In movies such as this, you typically find both people equally at fault, but Ryan's character is simply a walking disaster and you wonder how she has made it this far in life without being killed while trying to hug a grizzly bear.

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