From Jeremy Kibler

Meg Ryan is back, co-starring and directing herself alongside David Duchovny in What Happens Later, an airport-set romantic comedy between mature adults. Based on Steven Dietz’s play “Shooting Star” and adapted by Ryan, Dietz & Kirk Lynn, the film is sprinkled with dreamy magical realism but also bittersweet poignancy. Just check all cynicism at the door, and you’ll get along fine.

It’s Leap Day (a magical day!) when two former lovers cross paths 25 years later inside a regional airport terminal during their connecting flights. Wilhelmina “Willa” Davis (Ryan), a quirky healing practitioner, is coming from Austin to fly into Boston, and William “Bill” Davis (Duchovny), a real estate broker, is coming from Boston to fly into Austin. Both see each other when the other isn’t looking and try hiding, but it doesn’t work. Willa and Bill are now face to face, forced to make small talk. They start catching up and right before they’re about to part ways, a snowstorm delays both of their flights, and their flights only. This gives both W. Davises time to reconnect and get down to what made them wrong for each other. Or, are they now right for each other?

Even with her absence from the screen, Meg Ryan still remains an engaging presence, a ray of light, just as she was in When Harry Met Sally…, Sleepless in Seattle, and You’ve Got Mail. In lesser hands, the rain stick-wielding Willa might have come off too gratingly flighty to endure (she even writes phone numbers inside her shoes), but Ryan makes her more of a charming free-thinker. David Duchovny, aging like a fine wine, initially comes across as an uptight bore as Bill, proclaiming to have anticipatory anxiety. He gets easily irritated by the choice of music playing on the airport speakers (all of them are covers of popular songs and initially distracting but pleasing to hear), and then he openly admits to Willa’s personality being the reason they broke up. 

Put Ryan and Duchovny together, though, and they have a lovely chemistry with each other that feels more lived-in with both characters having history and mutual pain. By the end, we feel like we know Willa and Bill inside and out, and why they never worked out. Both of them know the other’s quirks and what irritates the other. There isn’t a tidy bow in the end, but there is a tinge of hope that they’ll find each other again when there’s a little magic in the air.

The film is directed by Ryan with a light touch that never feels heavy-handed or too cutesy when it comes to the fantastical artifice that’s by design. Since Willa is a magical thinker, the film eventually adopts a twinkly, almost surreal reality, where the airport’s loudspeaker announcer (voice of Hal Liggett) will directly speak to them and all other passengers and waitstaff seemingly disappear. Besides recycling the same establishing shots of a snowy tarmac, Ryan also makes good use of the space without it ever becoming too static. 

“W. Davis” is probably spoken too many times by Willa to turn into a drinking game. But as long as one can get past the admittedly annoying banter in the early going, What Happens Later becomes more whimsical, wistful, and kind of enchanting. Meg Ryan dedicates the film to Nora Ephron, and one would like to think that Nora would be touched.

Rating: 3/5

What Happens Later hits theaters on November 3, 2023. 

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