In 2013, Anna Todd wrote After on Wattpad as a Harry Styles fanfiction and later went on to publish it in 2014. The story follows college students Tessa and Hardin through a tumultuous relationship with a lot of pushing and pulling. Many people have heard of the movie After, but not as many people know that a sequel, After We Collided, was released this year, and there are many reasons for this. The After movies are movies you watch to feel better about yourself, not because they’re super inspiring, but because they make you thank your lucky stars that your lives are not like theirs.
The first After movie was met with reviews that mainly consisted of “I want my two hours back” or “I want a refund” and the second movie has similar feedback. The public didn’t even know the movie was in production as nobody really expected it, however we now know that movie three will most likely be produced after the pandemic is over, so there’s no escaping this series.
After has a whopping 19% on Rotten Tomatoes, and After We Collided has 17%. The movies are, like most Wattpad stories turned published books, not that great. Tessa is a college student who has experienced basically nothing because she loves studying and reading books and all that, and Hardin is a “bad boy” who has tattoos, multiple friends, and most likely a criminal record. Yes, it’s that trope. The movies are very cliché, not straying from the story at all. The bad boy falls in love with an innocent nerd who’s only had one boyfriend her whole life. The bad boy has really mean friends who are out to get the nerdy girl. The nerdy girl has been sheltered her whole life. You get it. It’s like Grease without the songs and amazing character arcs. I watched the second movie and wondered why scriptwriters didn’t veer off track from the books. Certainly they did that for The Princess Diaries and Harry Potter and it worked out fine, so why not try to salvage the good parts of the movie?
The cast is one of the good parts of the movies. Hardin Scott is played by Hero Fiennes Tiffin and Tessa Young is played by Josephine Langford. Although both actors haven’t acted much, their acting is very parallel with the characters. They behave like young adults. People have argued that the casting wasn’t well done, however, Hero portrayed a dumb college student who is too full of himself well, and Josephine played a booksmart nerd who is also too full of herself. The acting is very mediocre, but given the nature of the script, this was expected from the beginning when movie rumors began. The cast did well with what they were provided, and I hope to see them go on to portray better roles. Truth is, Tessa and Hardin are poorly written characters, but what Josephine and Hero have done with the characters is acceptable enough.
Watch both After movies when you’re having a bad day and I promise it’ll either make you sink into your couch from secondhand embarrassment or make you cry laughing (even at the sad parts).
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