There’s an impressive level of confidence displayed by Meg Ryan in her second outing as director, less so for what the film itself ends up being but more for what she’s trying to emulate. The star of When Harry Met Sally making a talky two-hander romcom, dedicated to that film’s screenwriter, Nora Ephron, demands an immediate comparison to one of the greatest examples of the genre ever made. But What Happens Later, AKA When Meg Met David Duchovny, is set up for an almighty fall, struggling to even deserve comparison to the star’s less-lauded romcoms.
Ryan became intimately associated with the genre for so many years because she was such an endless source of warmth and charisma, boasting a magic, ineffable charm that only a handful of other actors have ever truly had (Hepburn? Roberts? McAdams? Blunt?). The great romcom renaissance of recent years – which in fact has not been that great on closer examination – hasn’t given us many, if any, true successors, and so even if her big return to not just the genre but acting in general isn’t all that memorable, it’s a simple pleasure to see her briefly back in this mode. She and Duchovny, like Julia Roberts and George Clooney in last year’s Ticket to Paradise, make it all look so much easier than their younger, streaming pairings have, and the film remains low-stakes watchable solely because of their combined electricity.
