Recxpectations: After The Hunt

I don’t know if I truly got what “After the Hunt” was going for. Then again, I think that I actually understood it fine and was just unmoved by it.

SYNOPSIS: The pompous ivory tower of Yale is rocked when a young philosophy student accuses a popular professor of sexual assault. Julia Roberts plays the mentor of the student and friend of the accused, stuck in the middle of the crisis.

EXPECT: JULIA ROBERTS’S CHARACTER TO BE THE CENTRAL FIGURE
On one hand, this should be obvious since Julia Roberts is the biggest star in the movie, however, the trailer features a line from Ayo Edebiri, “It’s just, like, amazing to me, a young black woman can get assaulted and all these white people figure out a way to make it about themselves.” and then the movie does just that. And Roberts’s character isn’t nearly as interesting as Ayo’s, a young black woman who had been adopted into a rich family who has donated “half the campus” at Yale University, so she is presumably both a “black face in a historically white place” and a person who benefits from privilege (but the privilege comes from her adopted parents, adding another layer.) There’s a potentially fascinating identity politics character study there but, instead, Ayo is mostly there to bring conflict into Julia Roberts’s life. This also reminded me a little bit of the film “Luce”, which I liked much more.
Again, maybe I didn’t get it and there’s a meta-commentary about Hollywood here and how films handle non-white characters but I’m not so sure about that.

DON’T EXPECT: EXPOSITORY DIALOGUE
I feel like Goldilocks right now because I’m constantly complaining about too much expository dialogue but this film had a complete lack of it. We often are learning things in the middle of a conflict, which tends to be more distracting than additive.

EXPECT: BAD DECISIONS
In some cases, the bad decisions are part of what seems to be the core thesis on the film - These high-minded Ivy League types are as dumb as the rest of us - but, other times, they seem to be the cardinal sin of Bad Decisions - Because The Story Needs It. Combined with the previous issue of lack of expository dialogue, there’s one C or D story that goes from What the Fuck?! to Why the Fuck?! (Granted, when you look back, it’s easy to figure out why it went down the way it did but it is less rewarding discovery and more, “Oh, I guess that’s why.”)

EXPECT: A MEANDING BACK HALF
At the Alamo Drafthouse, they bring the check to you when there’s about 45 minutes left in the film. I was surprised when the check came because this film is 2 hours and 19 minutes so I was really engrossed in the film and it was moving along. And then things screech to a halt. I think a large part of it, for me, was because the movie really starts to focus on Julia Roberts’s characters and some issues that one might call “mysterious” and others, like myself, would call “vague to the point of not all that interesting.” Even the cinematography, which was impressive for most of the film, starts to become overbearing and there were a couple of “Ooh, look at this angle. ARTSY!” moments.

Ultimately, this film didn’t quite work for me. I ranked it at #21 of the year, in between smaller indie fare “Pools” and “The Baltimorons”.