What Happens Later

We've all seen a plethora of romantic comedies in the years we've been on this planet, but how many romcoms have you seen with only three (including a voice over) which encumbers the entire cast? Well, "What Happens Later" not only has this extremely limited cast, but also captures your attention during its close to two-hour running time. 

Two ex lovers, Bill Davis (David Duchovny) and Willa Davis (Meg Ryan), who just happens to share the same last name, get snowed in at a small regional airport overnight indefinitely delayed. Willa, a magical thinker, and Bill, a catastrophic one, find themselves just as attracted and annoyed by one another as they did decades earlier in this chance encounter. As they unpack the riddle of their mutual past and compare their lives to the dreams they once shared, they begin to wonder if their reunion is mere coincidence, or something more enchanted.

The only other one to round out the cast is Hal Liggett as the airport voice over, who is pivotal in this role and script.

This was poignantly directed by Meg Ryan ("Ithaca" '15). Even though this is only Ryan's second outing in the director's chair, she has truly captured these two characters at the emotionally rawest of situations. This isn't merely a chance encounter replete with small talk and 'what went wrong with the relationship', like in other romcoms. This film dug much deeper and it simply showed in how Ryan was able to show the audience how vulnerable these people were and are. It was penned very well by writers Steven Dietz, Kirk Lynn and Meg Ryan, based on the play "Shooting Star" by Steven Dietz. None of these writers have a substantial amount of experience, but they were able to pull off a very interesting storyline. Of course, Dietz wrote the play which this film is based, so surely that had to be the largest reason of the script's success, but the other writers were undoubtedly pivotal in their input as well. Usually I feel if there's more than two writers involved in any one film, it has a tendency to become bogged down--too many chefs in the kitchen, but with the playwright being involved in the script, this helped. Was it perfect? No, but really, other than a couple of very small slow spots and a small continuity issue, this was an incredible screenplay. 

This film is clearly about picking up where one has left off at, meaning these two individuals split decades ago with much baggage involved with them both. This happenstance meeting at this airport gave them the opportunity to make good on an otherwise sour relationship when they split up. This goes deep--much deeper than I thought would happen. And this is a good thing that all of us can learn from. 

Out of 4 Stars: 3                                          Rated: R                                                 103mins.