Starring Charles Farrell, Marian Nixon and Minna Gombell
Produced by Fox Film Corporation
After Tomorrow is a strange little romantic comedy. Most rom-coms focus on the couple's courtship: the meet-cute, the courtship, the misunderstanding that almost breaks them up, the last minute reconciliation...
After Tomorrow has none of these things. When we meet our couple, Pete and Sidney, they are already an item. They've been together for years and want to get married. Only trouble is, they cannot afford to live together. This is the Great Depression, Pete has a poor job and their respective mothers are too self-absorbed to be helpful. Pete's mom is codependent and clingy, sabotaging her son's chance at love at every turn; Sidney's mom wants a better life, even if that means buying a beautiful new negligee and forcing her daughter to pick up the bills.
The couple dream of their life "after tomorrow," a lyric from their favorite song that provides the film's title. The lovebirds begin to suspect however that after tomorrow will never come. Every day they wake up and it remains sadly "today."
The film, based on a play, gives the couple a prerequisite roller coaster ride of emotions. Pete gets a new job that pays enough to get them to the altar, but on the eve of the wedding, Sidney's mom leaves with another man and her father has a heart attack (requiring expensive medical treatment that once again drains the marriage fund).
While there is a kernel of drama and comedy here and there, After Tomorrow succeeds as neither a tear-jerking romance nor a laugh-a-minute romp. The obstacles it sets up are paper-thin and over-written. It never feels like things happen to people in the story. It's more like some screenwriter decided we hadn't hit the runtime yet so let's erect another obstacle in the path of the inevitable wedding.
Compounding the issues with the story is the universally unsympathetic cast of characters. Both of the mothers are conniving, but in the most transparent of ways. Pete's mom plots to prevent her son from leaving while Sidney's mom wants to live high on the hog. But neither of them carry out their plans in secret. Pete's mom in particular basically comes out and says what her goals are several times. Of course, they're the villains so we're supposed to root against them.
Sidney's father loves his wife, but he also sees her for what she is. And when he continues to pine for her after she's taken up with another man, it's hard to see him as anything but pathetic.
Because their mom's motives are so obvious, Pete and Sidney come off as foolish saps for following along with their shenanigans. Pete seems so willing to make his mom happy, you begin to wonder if his heart is really in this marriage thing at all. He supposedly wants to spend the evening with the love of his life, but a simple guilt trip from mom sends him running home.
For her part, Sidney is a better character, but not by much. She momentarily stands up for herself when her mom has failed to clean the kitchen, but all it takes is a feigned headache for the cheerily dutiful daughter to agree to complete the chore herself. She seems constantly suspicious of her mom, but never acts on it.
Take the couple together and all we really know is they want to get married. And that they have cute pet names for one another. In one of those touches you only get in a pre-Code film, their thoughts seem dominated in subtle and later unsubtle ways by the sex they are not having, but you never really understand why they are together at all. And that makes it harder to invest in the race to the altar.
Frank Borzage does phenomenal camerawork here, following characters along streets and using some deep focus techniques, but it is all an exercise in futility. There is no story here. It's a premise with a foregone conclusion, only postponed by obstacles that annoy. No need to rush out and watch this one. Better to schedule it for sometime after tomorrow.
** out of *****
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