It’s hard to overstate how much we’ve missed Meg Ryan.
The effervescent actress helmed some of the most indelible romantic comedies of the 1980s and ’90s, from the Nora Ephron classics “When Harry Met Sally,” “You’ve Got Mail” and “Sleepless in Seattle” to weirder outings such as “Joe Against the Volcano”.
Now, at 61, she’s returned to her favorite genre with “What Happens Later,” co-starring the equally valuable David Duchovny, 63. It’s the rare rom-com headlined by two sexagenarians, centered on an ex-couple as they analyze their differences while at an airport.
When the trailer for “What Happens Later” (in theaters Oct. 13) premiered Wednesday, movie fans on X (formerly Twitter) wildly celebrated her return. “I almost cried watching Meg Ryan” said one user. “A new Meg Ryan rom-com will fix everything.” proclaimed another.
With her shaggy blonde tresses and mischievous smile, Ryan has long been one of our most exciting actresses. In “You’ve Got Mail,” she delivers one of the best rom-com performances ever, bringing disgust and vulnerability to Kathleen, an independent bookseller who hangs desperately in her late mother’s window. “Anything else that’s anything else has to start with being personal,” Kathleen says at one point, which aptly describes Ryan’s quirky and open-hearted approach to acting.
The charming trailer for ‘What Happens Later,’ Ryan’s second film as a director, reminds us how lucky we are to have her back later an eight-year hiatus from acting. It’s also another reminder that Hollywood needs to invest in more movies starring women over 40.
In quotations provided in Entertainment Weekly Before the actors’ strike, Ryan said the film “evolves the rom-com genre a little bit. It’s also about older people, and it’s still romantic and sexy.”
Watch the trailer: Meg Ryan returns to rom-coms with “What Happens Later” opposite David Duchovny
According to an analysis released in March by the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University, 36 percent of movies released last year featured a speaking female character in her 30s. But that number dropped sharply as women reached 40 (16%), 50 (8%) and 60 (7%).
By comparison, the numbers were nearly double for male characters in their 40s (29%) and 50s (15%), while 9% of films featured men over 60.
From a box office perspective, audiences clearly want to see movies with women over 40. Ryan’s 1990s rom-com contemporaries Julia Roberts (“Ticket to Paradise”) and Sandra Bullock (“The Lost City”) both recently grossed $150 million worldwide with their respective films. “80 for Brady,” featuring an A-list female cast whose ages ranged from 76 to 91, earned a respectable $40 million worldwide earlier this year.
And on streaming, Reese Witherspoon’s “Your place or mine” and Jennifer Lopez “Shotgun Wedding” were big hits when they debuted on Netflix and Amazon, respectively, in early 2023. Clearly, there’s an appetite for all kinds of women’s stories, as long as Hollywood is willing to tell them.
Narratives about aging – and how people and relationships grow with it – are important to see on the big and small screen.
“They can help shape our perceptions of what aging might look like in today’s world as it is,” Katherine Pieper, program director at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, told USA TODAY earlier this year. “The more we can see authentic depictions of what it means to grow up in society … that can be very important to how people think about their own life course.”
So instead of headlines for Ryan’s appearanceas we saw earlier this summer, let’s get back to what really matters: the work itself.
“There are more important conversations than how women look and how they age,” Ryan said Net-A-Porter Magazine in 2015. “I love my age. I love my life right now. I love what I know. I love the person I’ve become, the person I’ve grown into.”
To paraphrase another Ephron favorite: We’ll have what he has.
Contributed by Erin Jensen
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