Hello, wonderlandians. Today I have a movie review for you of After. After if you don’t know is a book that was written by Anna Todd and was recently adapted into a feature-length film that premiered last Friday, April 12th. Now I was fortunate enough to see the movie a day before it came out because my theater does that and I know a lot of other people saw it on April 11th as well. Why did I wait until April 15th to write this review I really needed to gather my thoughts and opinions about the adaptation. So I’m going to be breaking this review down into a couple of parts I’m going to be reviewing the movie by itself and then I will be comparing it as a book to movie adaptation.

Now I need for everybody to understand that I am not bashing the movie I’m not bashing the actors who put all of their hard work and effort into this fell. I am going to be critiquing the movie and I’m going to be pointing out things that I didn’t particularly like about it but I will mostly be doing that in the book to movie adaptations portion of this review.

Movie Review

About two months ago I listened and reviewed the after audiobook. I was really excited for this movie to come out that as soon as I could pre-order my ticket I did. I went into this movie knowing that they were going to be making it PG-13. So with that in mind, I knew that they were going to be many changes made from the book to the movie at application portion of it.  I will be getting into all of that in my review of the book to movie adaptation portion. So as a film as a standalone I really enjoyed my time watching the film. It was a very cute film. The acting for me was beyond the point I thought all of the actors and actresses playing the parts had really great chemistry. All of the locations were absolutely beautiful. The cinematography was on point. Every shot was beautifully filmed. My hats go off to the cinematographers because as a photographer myself I enjoyed every aspect of that. For the story as a whole if I had not read the books and I went to go see this movie I honestly feel like I would have been very confused. I have seen a lot of people on Twitter who haven’t read the books saying that they were very confused about what was going on. I feel how the editing was it was very choppy and didn’t feel like a whole cohesive story.

I definitely have a feeling that it is going to be greenlet for a second movie.  I have to say that if this does happen I will be very intrigued to see how they are going to bring the second book to life because there was so much changed. Josephine Langford is a new actress to me. I have never seen her act in anything before and I thought she pulled the leading female character off very well. For somebody who is a newbie actress who is thrust into a very popularized book-to-movie adaptation that has a very strong fan base, it can be a little scary. At least this is quite a lot of young women say. I think she has done a fantastic job. Hero plays the main male character and he played Voldemort in Harry Potter while young Voldemort anyway. So book-to-movie adaptations shouldn’t be anything new to him. Harry Potter has a very loyal fan paste and I must say they might be a little crazier than After fandom.

As a whole After set out to do what it wanted to do. I have a feeling we will be seeing Josephine and Hero gracing the big screen once again in the next After movie.

I have to end this off by say that I actually LIKED the movie. I really enjoyed my time watching it.

Comparing the Movie to the Book

This is actually the part of the review I’ve been dreading.  Now not all book to movie adaptations are great. Unfortunately, this one falls in that category. If you want to go read my review of the book after by Anna Todd here is where you can go read that. this movie was a very watered-down completely change the version of the book. The first mistake I feel that they made was making this a PG-13 movie. If you read the books you will understand that the books are not at all rated PG-13. They are very much rated R in the sense of movie ratings. After is not a book that should be read by Young teenage people. Those are just the facts I am seeing many reviews from people in their late teens probably early twenties now who said that they read the book as early as 12 years old. I know for a fact that I would never let my 12-year-old son or daughter pick up this book. One because there are heavily graphic sexual scenes. Yes I know that they can find that on television but as a parent I really would think that there would be more policing on what your children are reading. That’s my personal opinion. so the fact that they really watered down the sexual tension between Tessa and Hardin kind of irritated me because their relationship at the core is very lustful. Harden is this very possessive person and in the movie, we don’t get that at all. maybe a little bit but not to the extent that we get it in the book. Hardin, in fact, is actually a lot sweeter they really did soften him for the movie. This is one point that got a lot of the fans kind of disappointed in the movie. Hardin is meant to be a very cruel individual to everybody around him. This has a lot to do with his upbringing from his dad being an alcoholic and his mother being raped.

Tessa for me was very much how she was in the books. So I really don’t have any qualms about her. What I do have a big issue with is the pacing of the movie was way too fast. There were a lot of scenes that were filler and were sped up too quickly. There were scenes in the movie that really shouldn’t have gotten as long as a timeframe as they did. A lot of crucial parts that make a lot of sense to the story or not in the film or were rush over. I personally feel like this did a disservice to the storytelling of the movie as a whole. some factors that were changed were how Tessa meets Hardin dad. In the book they have a dinner. In the movie she meets him at the wedding. This to me was a little bit problematic because there was a whole build-up to the wedding that we get in the books that we do not see in the movie. Again to meet at the little bit of sloppy storytelling. Another big part of the book is the fact that Harden gets an apartment for him and Tessa. He’s paying for it. In the movie, they are at a friend of his dad’s apartment where they can say for a year. In the book he got Tessa to put her name on the lease. This kind of locks her into a sticky financial situation because she can’t break that lease at as long as she is I’m at least he has some kind of connection to her.

One thing that I really like is they changed Tristan’s character to female which really expanded the diversity that we didn’t really see in the books. With this change, I was actually very proud that they made this.

The one change I really can’t Overlook is how they changed the bet.  in the book The that was for Hardin to basically trick Tessa into losing her virginity. This for me was such a crucial part of who Hardin was and by the end of the book and even into the next book him trying to break away from who he was. This was a very disgusting thing that happened in the book but it was pivotal to the storyline. In the movie, all he had to do was make her fall in love with him. This in my opinion is very much over played in Hollywood and I was actually really excited to see the that played out on screen. It would have brought something new and exciting. In an interview that Anna did, she said that she wanted to change the bat because in her opinion it wouldn’t translate while on film. I completely disagree with that, in fact, it would have made it way more interesting. She also cringes when she reads how she made the BET. Honestly, authors should stand by her writing and I feel like she made the changes she did because she was trying to fix the things that in her mind she had messed up. It’s there it’s in writing please stand by what you write.

It may seem like I’m coming really hard for the book to movie adaptation portion. That’s probably because I am. This honestly probably should have been picked up by passionflix. If you guys don’t know what passionflix is it is kind of like Netflix but for romance novels. I feel they do an amazing job when it comes to book movie adaptations. Everyone that I’ve seen I’ve absolutely fallen in love with. They stick really close to the books swell as much as they can. Pretty much from the books that I’ve read and the movies that I’ve seen they don’t miss much. There are a lot of fans who are disappointed by the book to movie adaptation. As I’ve said as a movie it’s not bad. As an adaptation, this book is not adapted it’s Loosely based off of the book.

This just in there is going to be a second movie.

I feel like at this point I’m just ranting and I’m really sorry about that. Let me know if you are going to be seeing the movie. Let me know if you read the book and what you think of it.

Thank you all for joining me here in our little part of Wonderland. Please do not forget to feed the unicorns on your way out.

Until next time

much love

happy reading

Ashten