‘What Happens Later’ Review: Meg Ryan & David Duchovny Connect In A Smart, Magical Two-Hander That Proves There’s Still Life In Romantic Comedies
deadline.comAt the end of Meg Ryan‘s beguiling and grown-up new romantic comedy What Happens Later, a simple dedication card shows on screen that says “To Nora.” And for star, director and co-writer Ryan, that says it all.
After an eight-year absence from the screen, Ryan has returned, both in front of and behind the camera, to a genre that made her a huge star thanks also in large part to the late great Nora Ephron, whose trio of collaborations with Ryan — When Harry Met Sally (directed by Rob Reiner), Sleepless in Seattle and You’ve Got Mail — truly defined what a joyful experience a romantic comedy could be when in the right hands.
Ryan clearly learned at the altar of a master, and it is all on display in this lilting, wistful, magical and wise confection, a two-hander about an accidental reunion of two college lovers some 30 years older.
They make a new, if brief, connection while waiting out a snowstorm that has grounded each of them in an airport. This is an inspired location due to the fact that those around them are in a hurry to make literal connections, not the sort that takes these two disparate souls and tosses them into an unexpected reflection of the life that was, the life that is and maybe the life that could have been — or not.
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