It seems that every year, multiple romantic comedies are announced, trailers soon follow, and the public of the internet cries out “Romcoms are finally back!” From 2017’s The Big Sick to 2019’s Always Be My Maybe, the mainstream romcom is constantly declared as back and better than ever, but is it really? It might be the closest to mainstream relevance that it’s been since the early 2000s, with Will Gluck’s Anyone but You becoming the sleeper hit of the year grossing over $200 million globally. More often than not, though, romantic comedies are relegated to the small screen of television or dumped unceremoniously on streaming services — the genre never died, but it has been abandoned by the majority of the public. While some of these streaming films are destined to become classics (like this year’s Rye Lane, an incredibly charming and inventive entry into the genre from Raine Allen Miller), core questions remain: how can romantic comedies win audiences back and become viable genres yet again? Is one sleeper hit enough to revitalize the genre? And how do we find the perfect leads to make an audience believe in love again? Meg Ryan might have the answers with What Happens Later; at least, she’s close to figuring out the answer.
What Happens Later stars Meg Ryan as Willa Davis, a free spirit on a journey to Boston whose flight is delayed by the snowstorm of the year. Coincidentally, she’s stuck with her ex-husband Bill Davis (David Duchovny), anxious and straight-laced, just trying to make it to a meeting with his boss in Austin. In missing their connections, they are forced to reconnect with each other, just to save themselves the awkward glances and speedy exits in trying to avoid each other. Once they’re past the painful small talk, they find each other impossible to avoid and impossible to turn away from — a magnetic, and even magic, force pulling them together as the storm rages on outside.
Ryan and Duchovny are no strangers to the romance genre. Ryan, most famously in her collaborations with screenwriter and director Nora Ephron, became synonymous with romance, both in comedies like When Harry Met Sally and dramas like City of Angels. As Erin Carlson remarks in her book “I’ll Have What She’s Having: How Nora Ephron’s Three Iconic Films Saved the Romantic Comedy,” Ryan is, in essence, “a gifted actress trapped in the vessel of a Disney princess;” she is bubbly sweet on screen in sometimes saccharine films but with the talent to back up mega stardom. Duchovny, meanwhile, alongside romantic film roles like his turn in Return to Me, was the leading man of a foundational “will-they-won’t-they” TV romance as Agent Fox Mulder on The X-Files. Combining the two stars seems obvious even today, when both stars have outgrown these parts they became instantly recognizable for.
What Happens Later proves the pairing has weight to it, and they have to; after all, the entire runtime relies on these two actors almost exclusively delivering lines to each other. That might give viewers some pause. The film is based on the play Shooting Star by Steven Dietz, and the entire essence of the film makes this obvious. While this has its drawbacks, the chemistry and dynamic Ryan and Duchovny establish as Willa and Bill is not one of them. In an interview by Maureen Lee Lenker for Entertainment Weekly, the actors discussed their lengthy rehearsal and rewriting process, allowing the “natural rhythm” they shared to blossom on set.
Willa feels like a critique of the types of characters Ryan became known for, her head so in the clouds that she can’t find her way back down. With Bill as a cynical contrast, the dialogue keeps a great pace, even though their roles as each other’s foils can get repetitive. More often than not, though, their ability to play off each other is engaging and funny. Not every joke lands, especially not ones designed to make a mockery of how older generations struggle with the changing times, but their playful banter has more than enough jabs at themselves and each other to keep a smile on your face. Ryan especially shines in this with her natural delivery, scoffs, and inability to back down from a classic bit of banter.
As a director, Ryan makes the most of the script’s limitations. The art of film is a bit more freeing than the stage, which can make this adaptation seem a bit lackluster when the film relegates all of the action of Willa and Bill’s lives to dialogue rather than moments the audience can see for themselves. The choice to keep the setting in this single location, though, reflects the characters: yes, they literally cannot leave the airport, but they also cannot correct the past, or even relive it for more than a second. The college sweethearts who experienced unimaginable grief and the kind of mistakes everyone does in their youth cannot save the long-ended relationship, but they can have the closure you can only get in the movies. Ryan’s camera lingers in the present in every way it can, with her best work being the multiple scenes where Duchovny and Ryan share the screen, talking over and interrupting each other, both given the space to react in the moment. “But also the way she shot,” Duchovny notes, “in most movies, television shows, comedies especially, the rhythm is created in editing and it’s often off of closeups and reaction shots… And Meg was so confident of our rhythm.” Above all, Ryan knows the material intimately and how to make it shine in the way only it can.
While the dialogue and framing give the film an old school charm, not all of the ways it calls back to the past are as pleasant. Exterior shots, special effects of the snowstorm, and the lighting in many shots feel cheap in the same way as a bargain bin, direct-to-DVD film. Budget isn’t everything, and while the film mostly works within the limitations it has, you can’t always escape the poorly shot plane taking off, which looks neither real nor fake. The film’s score also calls to mind the kind of overly sentimental romantic comedies Ryan made sans Ephron. As a second film for Ryan, however, the signs are there that she has a deep understanding of her material. It doesn’t look perfect, but Ryan finds the magic in it, whether it be in the sound design of a mumbled whisper that becomes clear by the film’s end or a heart suddenly hanging from the ceiling of a hallway, right as our leads might have reached a true reconciliation.
All of these factors can make or break the film depending on the viewer — do you long for the days of romcom past, or does even the premise of exes finding closure in an airport bore you to tears? Charm is the only thing that can sway a weary viewer, and What Happens Later has it. Bill and Willa aren’t Harry and Sally, but they bounce off each other pretty well. It doesn’t reinvent the romantic comedy wheel, but it knows why the wheel was invented in the first place — for the silliness and overwhelming power of love, which coexist in Ryan’s film so beautifully. What Happens Later is likely not the next romcom classic, but its good-natured earnestness makes it worth a watch.
