From Wattpad to book to movie, After is a series of fan-fiction books inspired by the One Direction heartthrob Harry Styles. Josephine Langford and Hero Fiennes Tiffin play young lovers in this screen adaptation of Anna Todd’s popular fan-fiction novel. After takes an adequate novel and turns it into a stereotypical and predictable teen movie.
The story begins when squeaky clean, sheltered Tessa arrives at her freshman year of college. Her rebellious roommate introduces her to Hardin, a short-tempered British bad boy. Like most cliche love stories, the two first despise each other just like Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice. Before Hardin, Tessa was content with her simple life. She loved her high school boyfriend back home, her controlling single mother and enjoyed staying in to study or read on a Friday night. But this all changes ‘after’ she meets Hardin.
Like most teen movies Hardin is the typical bad boy. Hardin has numerous tattoos, wears all black and smirks instead of smiles. He’s the complete opposite of Tessa who keeps her hair in an uptight pony-tail and would rather wear a dress than sweats to class. Their chance of having a realistic and healthy relationship is as likely as it sounds, but this is another teen movie so the couple will somehow defy the odds.
The biggest problem I had with the movie was Tessa. Her character flaw is that she’s dumb — except, she’s not. Tessa is an extremely smart student in the classroom but acts all naive when she’s around a boy. She makes decisions that she acknowledges are wrong, like cheating on her boyfriend with Hardin and lying to people who care about her. She never works to change her flaws but rather she makes these poor choices, addresses that they’re poor choices, and then waits to be confronted with them before apologizing having it all blow up in her face. I know that she is young and is supposed to make mistakes, but the way she handles her problems make her seem weak when in fact she’s not.
If you are a teen moviegoer, you might find this just like rest and probably enjoy it. But if you’re not I would suggest After is not the film for you. Though if you want to find some new music, the exaggerated scenes are accompanied by underrated pop songs from artists like Alessia Cara, The Fray and Bea Miller. To sum up, I would describe After as nice. Like when Tessa tells Hardin her boyfriends is “nice.” “Isn’t that just another word for boring?” Hardin asks.
