I read the whole series of “After” books when I was in high school and fell in love with every part of it. When I found out that author Anna Todd, with the help of others, was turning her famous four series book into a movie, I immediately was drawn in and knew I had to see it. Having seen the adaption now, I was highly disappointed to say the least. With a young and inexperienced cast, the movie was full of awkward scenes, cheesy sayings and overall bad production .
“After” is a typical bad boy, good girl romance. Extremely focused on her studies, Tessa Young goes away to college, leaving her boyfriend Noah back in high school. As she’s there, she runs into the rebellious Hardin Scott, who complicates her life as she starts to fall for him.
Based on the trailer that I watched a few times before seeing the movie, I expected a film faithfully based on the books that I was familiar with. The movie was off to a good start at the beginning and then just went downhill from there. As it kept going, each scene got worse. Some of the scenes were so cheesy, that I actually had to look away because I was cringing from it. Throughout the movie, I kept expecting certain things to happen, but a lot was cut off which was something I understood because of time, but the plot went a lot faster and didn’t make much sense as to how fast the two main characters were falling in love.
Overall, it was interesting to see how the books correlated with the movie, but I wanted and expected a lot more from the film than I received. “After” wasn’t something that I personally enjoyed and I don’t recommend seeing it, but the high school girls in the theater who were “wooing” over the British male lead actor the whole time would probably say otherwise. To those who have read the series, don’t waste your money and just stick to the books.
