Disclaimer: Contains Spoilers
On a particularly dull Thursday evening, my friend and I watched yet another romantic drama on Netflix. For some reason we thought After (2019) directed by Jenny Gage would be different, but yet again we set our expectations too high.
After was originally posted to Wattpad, an online platform for writers to post their work, in 2013 by Anna Todd as fanfiction. The story follows college freshmen Tessa Young who becomes consumed in a wild romance with a fictional Harry Styles (Hardin Scott in the film), who is essentially an e-boy. Todd has published three more novels since the first novel: After We Collided, After We Fell, After Ever Happy, and Before.
After blew up on Wattpad and the story eventually became a New York Times Bestseller. The movie was a hit in the box office and a sequel is already in the works. But don’t be fooled by the $69.5 billion the movie made at the worldwide box office— After is just another cringey drama that uses college stereotypes as characters and fills in potholes with poor acting and more clichés. After all (haha get it?), the Tomatometer on Rotten Tomatoes gave the film a 17% rating. If that isn’t a sign of a wasted night, I don’t know what is.
In the film adaptation, Josephine Langford plays Tessa Young and Hero Fiennes Tiffin plays Hardin Scott. Fun fact: Tiffin played 11-year-old Tom Riddle in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (he peaked as young Lord Voldermoert). While some viewers praise Langford’s portrayal of Tessa, this isn’t enough to warrant wasting an hour and forty-six minutes of your life. While I can relate to being a naive first-year, embarrassed by your mom who you have to convince not to report your roommate’s illegal hobbies, Langford’s acting and Tessa’s character bring nothing new to the romantic drama genre. After all (help, I can’t stop!), the innocent-studious-girl turned bad-girl saving the hot, emo-boy with various tattoos of various “deep” meanings trope becomes old. The film is basically a long strand of clichés strung together like a gold, crystal flower necklace you bought from Forever 21 for $7.50 (you know which one I am talking about).
Tessa arrives at some random university as an economics major who spends hours cramming in the library while her roommate Steph (Khadijha Red Thunder) attends parties and vapes with her girlfriend, Tristan (Pia Mia). Although Steph and Tristan’s relationship break the heteronormative status quo of the film, the rest of the relationships in the movie are straight.
Upon returning from the shower one morning, Tessa finds Hardin lying on her bed reading her copy of The Great Gatsby. Instead of screaming like a normal human being, Tessa suavely kicks Hardin out and informs him that The Great Gatsby is not a dream, but a lie. Oh, I did I mention that Tessa loves to read? You probably already guessed that. This conversation is actually the one moment in the film that I give the writers some credit for because it serves as foreshadowing. We later find out that there is a lie brewing between the two protagonists, but we will come back to that later.
Naturally, Steph convinces Tessa to come to a typical college party with drinking games and couples making out on kitchen counters. Tessa sports a conservative red lace dress that pins her as a pure 18-year-old. After this party, Hardin begins to woo Tessa, bringing her to his favorite spot on a dock by a lake (a normal human being would be skeptical of going to an isolated place with a boy they do not know). They go skinny dipping (as one does) and eventually kiss, which is unfortunate since Tessa has a boyfriend back home named Noah (Dyland Arnold). Tessa’s two worlds begin to collide and she ultimately chooses bad boy Hardin over good boy Noah, but this decision was made five seconds into the movie.
As the film continues, we begin to learn more about Hardin and why he has such a hard soul (more puns). He does not get along with his father Chancellor Ken Scott (Peter Gallagher), but we already saw these daddy issues five scenes ago. Tessa and Hardin attend the Chancellor’s wedding to Landon’s mother, Karen (Jennifer Beals). Landon (Shane Paul McGhie), who Tessa befriended in her first ever college class, warns Tessa about the darker demons Hardin deals with. He is also the black friend that the film cast to bring more diversity to this very white, very privileged, very status-quo story.
Tessa, of course, wants to save Hardin. She moves in with him to a very nice apartment, which he happens to be house sitting for a professor. Need I remind you that this is a very unrealistic portrayal of college dorm life. Tessa now wears eyeliner, baggy concert t-shirts, and reads classic novels because she is thinking of majoring in English instead of econ (basically, she is a VSCO girl).
At this point, things start to get crazy. Warning: spoilers ahead (but also, were you going to watch the movie anyway?). We find out that at the first party, Hardin made a bet with his friends that he could make Tessa fall in love with him and then be able to turn off his feelings with a snap of his fingers. I will admit that I did not see this coming, but then again I was angry that Todd stole a huge plot point of one of my favorite romantic comedies She’s All That (2013). Hardin, of course, ends up falling in love with Tessa and cannot turn off his feelings as fast as he originally thought. After finding out about the bet, Tessa returns home to the arms of her mother Carol Young (Selma Blair) who warned her of the perils of falling for the bad boy.
After finals, Tessa’s English professor hands her Hardin’s final paper which the professor explains was written more for Tessa than for her. Tessa reads this very short, very cliché, very B- worthy essay, and then goes to Hardin’s spot by the lake. Tessa finds herself back in the vicinity of Hardin because how else was this movie going to end.
This is my long-winded way of saying that After is not worth your time. It is just another The Kissing Booth (2018), which was also a Wattpad story. After depicts the college-experience in such a stereotypical way that paints college girls as more focused on sad boy Chad or Blake than on their econ homework. I am not denying that students change, experiment, and go to parties while at college, but instead of explaining this arc in a new way, After falls victim to the typical college trope of love-stories and raves. If, however, you want to laugh away the constant stress that is the real college experience, watch After and analyze it like your liberal arts education depends on it. •
