After Words Movie Poster

After an exclusive premier in New York City, the film After Words will be widely released in various Internet streaming venues. The reviews are in, and they fare much better than the last film that was mostly filmed in Costa Rica, the critically-panned science fiction blockbuster After Earth, starring Will Smith and his son Jayden.

Meave Gallagher of the Houston Press explains the film:

Marcia Gay Harden’s Jane is the most introverted woman who ever sat behind an information desk. Her library branch is closing, so she sets off for Costa Rica to kill herself in paradise. Instead, she meets Juan (Óscar Jaenada), a single father, tour guide, and occasional gigolo who gives Jane a week of tours in exchange for money he needs to pay for his daughter’s (Jenna Ortega) private school. Costa Rica is a beautiful place to film, and a woman’s journey into wholeness can make for a fine story. But [director Juan Feldman], having established all his stereotypes, refuses to push them beyond the motions…

Neil Genzingler of The New York Times writes:

Ms. Harden is fine in a role that requires little, but her character is a lazy stereotype that ought to make real librarians wince. Sure, librarians tend to be well read and take great pleasure in books, but most also probably have friends, social lives and a curiosity about the world. That Jane has none of those things costs the character credibility, and her transformation at the hands of Juan is also nonsense. A few beers and a zip line ride can undo a lifetime of timidity? Only in flimsy fantasies.

Here’s Gary Goldstein of the LA Times:

Harden plays Jane, [who] gets laid off as a Los Angeles; [the] deeply depressed book lover intends to commit suicide anyway, so, y’know, good timing. In addition, she’s planned a last-hurrah trip to Costa Rica, apparently to die somewhere beautiful and remote. Juan [is] a cute, kind, hyper-ebullient tour guide who takes Jane on a whirlwind week of sightseeing. In the process, he cracks her seemingly impenetrable shell. Suffice to say, one doobie and first-timer Jane’s a goner. [After Words] certainly works as an eye-popping travelogue. But as an emotionally resonant look at a middle-aged woman’s reawakening, it’s an underwhelming trip.

After Words features many scenes of life in Costa Rica’s southern Pacific region, particularly around Quepos and Manuel Antonio, which you can see in the trailer below. Bookstore Jaime Peligro, a staple of expat life in Quepos, is also featured prominently in the film. Even readers of The Costa Rica Star appear as extras; pay attention to the couple by the waterfall at the 1:42 minute mark