Less Twilight, more 50 Shades
After We Collided (M, 105 mins) Directed by Roger Kumble Reviewed by James Croot ★★
Tessa (Josephine Langford) and Hardin (Hero Fiennes Tiffin) have reacted very differently to his deceit. She has thrown herself into her internship at Vance Publishing, he has started sleeping in his car and treated himself to some new ink.
With his constant texts going unanswered, he begins to wonder how he’ll ever win her back.
But an opportunity comes when Tessa has a big night drinking to secure hedge fund money for her new boss’ expansion plans. In a moment of inebriated weakness she allows him into her bed, a decision she instantly regrets.
While finally collecting the rest of her stuff from their former shared lodgings, she runs into Hardin and his charismatic British mother Trish (Louise Lombard), on her first visit to the States.
Agreeing to pretend to still be together for her sake, Tessa listens intently to Trish’s tales of the incident that left 8-year-old Hardin traumatised and still suffering nightmares.
Could she be the one to ‘‘fix’’ this ‘‘lost little puppy’’? Or will his resentment, jealousy, alcoholism and ‘‘toxic badness’’ destroy him and take her down too?
Instantly unravelling its awful predecessor After’s seemingly hopeful ending, this sexed-up sequel quickly establishes a different tone.
Having failed with the first movie’s Cruel Intentions-meetsPride and Prejudice conceit due to a decidedly PG-13, Nicholas Sparks approach and a leaden script-bycommittee, author of this boy band fan fiction tale, Anna Todd, must have seen her five-book franchise was heading in only ‘‘One
Direction’’ – nowhere. So she’s taken on scripting duties, hired the man who directed the original Cruel Intentions (Roger Kumble) and got everyone to agree to a more ‘‘adult’’ take.
The result is a superior movie. There’s more humour, better chemistry and Lombard and Dylan Sprouse’s (The Suite Life of Zack & Cody) new characters add an extra dimension. However, After We Collided is still plagued by terribly telegraphed twists, dreadful dialogue and the overuse of pop songs to convey emotion.
Worse, with the raunch ramped up, the arrival of a vanilla rival (Sprouse’s ‘‘work wife’’ for Tessa, Trevor) and an oft-talked-about impending shift of the action from Atlanta to the Pacific Northwest, this feels even more like a story attempting to straddle the divide between the Twilight and Fifty Shades universes.
A story dominated by ‘‘daddy issues’’, misunderstandings and Victoria’s Secret product placement, it naturally came with a cliffhanger conclusion, leaving me with the thought that Taylor Swift’s Exiles sums up my overall impressions magnificently: ‘‘I think I’ve seen this film before, and I didn’t like the ending.’’