I started watching this one fully expecting to hate it given the aggressively downward trajectory of the franchise. And at first I was as sneeringly dismissive as I was with the terrible third flick. But then… you know… this movie turned out to be not nearly as bad as I thought.

So After Ever Happy is the fourth film in this franchise and follows right after the dramatic reveal of Holden’s real father <Insert dramatic sting here>. As if anything in the last movie mattered. Anyhow, plot plot plot – this is a romance movie between two lovers who spent the last three movies hating each other.

The thing is, this is the first time the girl in the relationship points out how tragically toxic they are together. And the first time where the guy isn’t a toxic manbaby 100% of the time. In fact, once various father-figure fallout finally finishes, the movie is just a simple romance between two people. A will-they/won’t-they (again). It isn’t full of rage-inducing moments where you want to punch the guy for being annoying or the girl for going back to him.

They spend most of the movie apart and occasionally smashing back into each other. And that’s… fine. He isn’t the usual prick that he is (except once or twice). It actually feels like two humans interacting instead of two props the writer has wound up for some hokey relationship trauma… I mean drama.

Yeah, they eventually get back together and, yeah, they have to have an asinine breakup to end the movie. Which means it ends with a “To Be Continued”. *sigh* Like the ever-so-much-worse 365 franchise, this series is just going to keep chugging along.

This is still not a very good movie but it’s a far sight better than the last two films and even bordered on occasionally *gasp* being slightly enjoyable. I suspect hopeless romantics might even like it. It’s got too much baggage though to redeem this overlong story though.

Score: 68