After Ever Happy: Movie review (2022)

9 September 2022

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After Ever Happy: Movie review (2022)

A gentle but emotional continuation of Tessa and Hardins long love story.
Confetti Mag

After Ever Happy follows Tessa and Hardin, who we have been obsessed with since the first movie came out in 2019, but some of us have been following them for much longer since Hardin was Harry and the cinema was sneakily reading Wattpad in the library at school. All these years later, I am amazed that I still find myself in the cinema watching this story unfold. All of the previous movies have had parts that I’ve loved and parts that have left me feeling a little disappointed, this movie was no different so it seems the pattern continues.

After Ever Happy (2022) is a gentle but emotional continuation of Tessa and Hardins long love story. The movie picks up right where the 2021 film ends, with Hardin finding out the disturbing news of the real identity of his father. While some of his behaviours are a little extreme, this realisation allows the audience to better sympathise with Hardin and understand some of his pain. The movie continues to provide us with the same ups and downs of their relationship that we have seen for the last 3 movies.

While I understand that some people are disappointed that this film wasn’t nearly as steamy as the second and third, I think the writers and producers made the perfect decision to tone it down. The theme of this movie (grief, loss and lies) are far more serious and heavy than pervious movies. The tone of the film was much more emotional and for that reason, adding in steamy scenes purely for the sake of it would have felt misplaced. I commend the writers and producers for sticking with the tone and theme of the movie, despite what the franchise is typically known for. We all go through different phases of life, and this phase was an important one to move the characters forward in their story.

All in all, I don’t think After Ever Happy was the best or worst in the series. It was different, and that I enjoyed. Although certain issues have persisted throughout the series like casting changes and some confusing storylines (why was Tessa so upset that he wrote a book?!) which bring down the overall quality of the movie.

While I thought that this was the last movie in the series, I was pleasantly surprised when the movie ended on a to be continued. This gives After one final chance to give us everything they’ve got. To take the best parts of all films and combine them into one epic finale. In the very very very slim chance that anyone who works on after sees this, I hope you take all the feedback you’ve received over the last few years and put that into the best film you’ve ever made!