What Happens Later (2023)
Who among us hasn’t wanted closure with an ex or time to catch up with an old friend? What Happens Later tackles that rare but not unheard of possibility. Based on the Steve Dietz play, Shooting Star, the film shows ex-lovers Willa Davis and Bill Davis meeting up at a Midwestern regional airport, and, improbably, they eventually are the only two people left in the building at the height of a mondo snowstorm.
Well, except for the unseen announcer who gives out instructions like the Great and Powerful Oz but with more of a sense of humor and less reverb.
Willa and Bill couldn’t be more different. It’s only their names that are the same, and we hear “W. Davis” so much over the PA system that it could be a drinking game.
(Don’t drink to this movie, by the way. Just don’t. Not even water. Anyone who does will be flat on their backs in twenty minutes, or at least bolting for the loo.)
Anyway, Willa is New Age-y and goes around doing cleanses of people’s chockras with a rain stick that she guards with her life. Bill is a straight-laced guy in finance who’s never without the Wall Street Journal (only the movie calls it the Wall Street Financial). Willa isn’t married. Bill has a daughter and is on the verge of divorce. They have a lot to unpack and a lot of time to lay everything bare. That means laughter, tears, revelations, and a certain question hanging in the air: “Where do we go from here?”
There’s a lot of wit in this film, and it’s fun seeing these characters reminisce and goof around, especially when they have the whole place to themselves, which is a bit improbable for an airport. Meg Ryan hasn’t lost anything as an actress, David Duchovny is a good foil for her charming self, and the film is dedicated to Nora Ephron, which is a nice touch. It’s also cool that we get to see so much of the Northwest Arkansas Airport, where the movie was filmed.
There’s a “but,” of course, because there always is. While I enjoyed Later, something about it didn’t sit right with me, and it took about a day to figure out what that was:
Pacing.
The movie tries to line itself up with Nora Ephron's prose style and the banter comedies of the thirties and forties, but the problem is the dialogue is too sluggish and a bit blah. Dietz’s original play has the characters delivering individual monologues sometimes, but we don’t get that in What Happens Later. It’s too bad, because monologues would have given the film a lot more meat.
Even without dialogue there should have been more happening. When Tom Hanks as Viktor Navorsky is alone in The Terminal, he’s always doing something that keeps us engaged and we can see a bit of what he’s thinking, such as when he learns English from travel guides or when he starts remodeling his section of the airport. Willa and Bill could have camped out in the first class lounge or the food court and strategically line up ketchup packets for the staff to find the next day. For starters, anyway.
Instead, we get plenty of to-Hades-with-it-all-type pronouncements, confusing and pointless instructions from the announcer, and riding in circles on a go-cart, not to mention cutesy fortune-cookie-esque exposition on the walls, such as “Dining At Altitude” on the windows of the restaurant where Willa and Bill eat dinner with their backs to each other.
Yeah, about that: I sometimes felt like the movie tried really hard to pay subtle homage to Meg Ryan’s film career. Willa and Bill dine back to back like Kathleen and Joe at the Cafe Lalo in You’ve Got Mail. Willa works for a marketing company like Kate in Kate and Leopold, only she’s not an executive. Oh, and there’s a significant but unseen character named Maggie. Eeep. Fortunately, the movie doesn’t go too far with its apparent navel-gazing, so there’s that.
For all that does happen, I was left wondering what the movie’s point was beyond these two characters taking stock of their relationship and where their lives had gone. Maybe a point wasn’t the aim of the movie. It was just these two characters finally getting closure on something that affected both of them very deeply and allowing them to really move on. I just wish we could have gotten to know them better in the ample time we were given with them.
What Happens Later is currently in theaters. Rated R.
My grade: B-
Principal Cast: Meg Ryan, David Duchovny, and Hal Liggett.
Directed by Meg Ryan.
Written by Steve Dietz, Kirk Lynn, and Meg Ryan.