On opening weekend, I went to watch the movie After in movie theaters, let me tell you it’s a very cheesy masakra of a predictable movie.

The movie’s budget was around 14 million and it made around twice this at 28 million according to Wikipedia.com. This movie was originally a five book series that got published after getting noticed on the website “Wattpad.” Author Anna Todd had been one of the producers on this movie with other several known producers and crew such as Mark Canton, Courtney Solomon, Adam Shankman.

The movie is a romance drama based around a girl named Tessa Young a freshman in college and Hardin Scott a sophomore in college. These two characters had two different lifestyles and somehow beating all coincidences they met and fell in love with each other. The books are filled with drama, tears, laughter, a lot of romance, some action, and scandals. It was definitely worth the 2,968-page read and the 106-minute watch.

On opening weekend, the movie theater was about half full, which was rather disappointing for the turn out. There had only been five movie times in the day, Yet, I was hopeful that this movie was going to be the masterpiece that originally was on paper but now just on screen.

As a passionate fan of the books, high expectations were held and was sorely disappointed with the movie. The movie had portrayed the book to be about a cheesy romance where the innocent girl meets boy and discovers herself through him…when the original story is far from that.

Certain missing details helped in ruining the quality. For example, the movie had removed an important relationship between Zed and Tessa, which had added tension to the relationship between Tessa and Hardin. The movie also downplayed Hardin’s initial hatred of Tessa when he first met her, which removed some of the passion between them which resulted from hating each other while simultaneously being in love. The movie made it seem like it was a love meant to be, and everything was too perfect.

The point of the book was to show even though they were truly not made for one another, they made it work through all the toxicity and challenges. The author was going for more of a “love is hard work” theme, while the movie made it a simple romance. Going from such an intense and unpredictable plot line to one that was easy to guess, it lost a lot of its credibility.

The After is a good watch if you have free time on your hands, it does pull your heartstrings. But I wanted to believe this movie would become and all time favorites for some, but it merely might just become a recommended for you on Netflix. I had come with high expectations of a great unimaginable love story between two opposites, black and white being finally made into a movie, but instead what was served was a predictable, unoriginal romance cliche of a movie.