Pretentious, Murky ‘After the Hunt’ Is Disturbing Take on Identity Politics

Pretentious, Murky ‘After the Hunt’ Is Disturbing Take on Identity Politics

By Lynn Venhaus

“After the Hunt” is a horrible movie about despicable people that attempts to tackle cancel culture, identity politics and a so-called female generation gap in 2019, which is strategically set during the #MeToo movement.

Ambiguous, pretentious and overlong, the psychological drama is a tedious watch because several lead characters are smug narcissistic liars who are morally bankrupt and intellectual know-it-alls.

These insufferable types are part of the insular world of Ivy League academia, in the philosophy department at Yale. Whether action is in a high-stakes classroom, a snooty Yale Club or a swanky dinner party, these caricatures are either going to pontificate or act out.

Directed by provocateur Luca Guadagnino, who is frustratingly vague about the points he’s trying to convey, meanders more than usual and boxes himself into a corner with Nora Garrett’s baffling screenplay.

Ayo Edebiri and Julia Roberts.




Apparently not a fan of political correctness, Guadagnino really does a disservice to victims of sexual abuse who deserve to be seen and heard. It’s an insult to anyone who has had the courage to come forward, at the risk of damage to their reputation. #MeToo needed to happen and should have much sooner.

While the A-list cast is given juicy, complex roles, the irredeemable parts lack connection and emotional truth.

Julia Roberts, at her most unlikable, plays haughty, viperous professor Alma Imhoff, whose fancy-schmancy lifestyle with her lapdog husband Frederik is built on secrets and lies.

Truly egregious is that Michael Stuhlbarg is wasted in an utterly ridiculous role as an attentive partner who gets little respect. Chances are odd-man-out Frederik will get fooled again, and again.

As this rotten character, Roberts doesn’t elicit one iota of sympathy. She recklessly drinks too much. She has severe abdominal pain and violent vomiting episodes, but instead of going to a doctor she abuses painkillers, which she downs by fistfuls.

Andrew Garfield and Julia Roberts.

She treats students cavalierly and acts superior to her peers. Not exactly role model material. Chloe Sevigny is also wasted as Dr. Kim Sayers in a too brief role as a psychiatric counselor that factors in to yet another subplot thread.

Alma is graduate student Maggie’s thesis advisor, and she attends her mentor’s dinner party. An inebriated Hank Gibson, a cocky professor played by Andrew Garfield, walks Maggie home.

As the star pupil, Ayo Edebiri is miscast as a character that is as nebulous as Garfield is repellent.

Later, a distraught Maggie confides in Alma that Hank, who was in her apartment for a nightcap, sexually assaulted her.

He denies it. She reports it. He’s fired and makes a lot of noise publicly. He was up for tenure, as is Alma, who has conveniently distanced herself from the situation. Or has she?

Ayo Edebiri as Maggie on the Yale campus.

It quickly gets very ugly. Maggie views it as a betrayal. Understandably, the Gen Z students rally around her. She is quite vocal in the press, while Alma becomes very vicious in response, showing a cold and calculating side to her bewildering personality.

Garfield is so off-putting as the swaggering Hank that it would be difficult to conjure up a smidgeon of sympathy over his career in tatters if that is what the film leans towards.

Don’t expect any relatability to these self-important characters. The academia snake pit comes across like an unappealing morass. These are selfish people who have such an inflated opinion of themselves that they think everything is about them.

Doesn’t it matter that Hank’s behavior is troubling and dangerous? In some sort of alternative universe, Maggie is now the subject of derision because her wealthy, influential parents are Yale’s biggest donors. Wait, what?

Is it a witch hunt? Hank’s version accuses Maggie of plagiarism. Oh, as if that’s not enough, they must unravel Alma’s past. There are too many plot points, and none satisfactorily resolved.

This supercilious debate about morality, ambition and ‘woke’ ideology fails to resonate. Is it an unwise battle between trailblazing women who broke glass ceilings and the entitled Gen Z’ers whose lives of privilege have handed them multiple gold-plated opportunities?

Contrivances abound as the plot goes in circles. Hank, longtime friend of Alma’s, perhaps had a sexual relationship with her, or did they just flirt a lot? She’d rather drink at a bar with him than go home to her psychoanalyst husband’s cassoulet.

And Maggie is purposely drawn to be unformed. She is in a relationship that lacks details. Her trans romantic partner and roommate is away when the Hank incident supposedly took place.

Cinematographer Malik Hassen Sayeed makes the hallowed halls of a prestigious university gleam with historic seriousness and the tony Imhoff home cultured and cavernous. The annoying contemporary score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross is uncharacteristically too obtrusive.

Chloe Sevigny and Julia Roberts.

Guadagnino is a polarizing director, with detractors saying his style is too murky on substance. His sumptuous locations look beautiful, and the films often superficially and uncomfortably deal with desire – “I Am Love,” “The Bigger Splash,” “Call Me by Your Name,” “Challengers” and “Queer.” Characters often are complicated and meant to be stimulating but lack clear identities.

A better film on this subject, an authentic one set in a college town, is “Sorry, Baby.”

What is “After the Hunt” trying to say, and why does it try too hard to get our attention when there really is no point? We are tasked with the heavy lifting of deciphering the storytelling.

After more than 2 hours, the preposterous conclusion feels like cheating, ending in a very self-indulgent way. 

The Imhoff dinner party in New Haven.

“After the Hunt” is a 2025 psychological drama directed by Luca Guadagnino and starring Julia Roberts, Andrew Garfield, Ayo Edebiri, Michael Stuhlbarg and Chloe Sevigny. It is Rated R for language and some sexual content and the run time is 2 hours, 19 minutes. Opens Oct. 17 in theatres. Lynn’s Grade: F.

‘tick, tick…Boom!’ Brims With Vitality, Celebrates the Creative Process

‘tick, tick…Boom!’ Brims With Vitality, Celebrates the Creative Process

By Lynn Venhaus

In the loving hands of director Lin-Manuel Miranda, the world will know Jonathan Larson’s name as more than the creator of “Rent,” one of the big-bang bursts in musical theater history, because of this enthralling origin story “tick, tick…Boom!”

Brimming with vitality, this brilliant gem shines spotlighting the creative process and the importance of pursuing your dreams. It is the best musical adapted from the stage since 2012’s “Les Miserables.”

Collaborating with many gifted artists, Miranda, in his feature film directorial debut, broadens this early work to appeal to the dreamer in all of us. We can relate to Larson as a visionary full of doubt, anxiety, and drive, who had a unique voice that was meant to be heard. Filled with passion, he pushed on, despite many obstacles in his way.

The young composer revolutionized theater with “Rent,”, but tragically, did not live to see the first Off-Broadway preview performance, because he died that day, Jan. 25, 1996, suffering an aortic dissection. He was 35. Five years earlier, he was writing a musical called “Superbia,” loosely based on George Orwell’s “1984” and full of angst about turning 30. He turned that experience in a rock monologue, “30/90,” which was later renamed “Boho Days” and finally “tick, tick…Boom.”

In this adaptation of that autobiographical musical, Jon (Andrew Garfield) is waiting tables at a New York City diner in 1990, and feeling pressure from his dancer-girlfriend Susan (Alexandra Shipp), his best friend Michael (Robin de Jesus), who traded in an artistic life for one of financial security, and people helping him put on a showcase of his work.

Meanwhile, a community is being ravaged by the AIDS epidemic. With the clock ticking, Jon is at a crossroads. He wonders what he is meant to do with the time he has.

In his most revelatory screen performance to date, Tony winner and Oscar nominee Garfield displays Larson’s virtuosity and bravado. He embraces the music numbers with abundant zest and connects with Alexandra Shipp as his exasperated girlfriend and Robin de Jesus as his frustrated friend.

The sharp script was written by Steven Levenson, who won a Tony for “Dear Evan Hanson.” The adage “write what you know” is a running theme – and one can see Larson’s style evolving, and his various influences throughout.

“30/90” deals with his feelings about growing older without much to show for his songwriting efforts. Envious of his friend’s luxurious life, he and Robin de Jesus have fun with “No More.”

In one of the musical’s stand-out pieces, “Sunday,” as conducted by Jon, is both an homage to revered composer Stephen Sondheim and a salute to artistic vision. The legendary Sondheim, who was a tremendous influence on Larson, is deftly underplayed by Bradley Whitford.

Several members of the original cast of “Rent,” as well as performers from Miranda’s masterpiece “Hamilton,” many Broadway legends and Tony winners have a shared moment in a Sunday brunch scene. It’s a “Where’s Waldo?” panoply of talent that you’ll want to stop and rewind over and over.

The film’s ensemble is tight, and several singers have stand-out moments – with Vanessa Hudgens singing her heart out as Karessa in “Come to Your Senses,” the show-stopping song that Larson finally pens after excruciating writer’s block episodes.

Another heart-tugging number is “Why,” when Jon plays an old rehearsal piano at the closed Delacorte Theater in Central Park.

If you are unfamiliar with “Rent,” now being celebrated in a national 25th anniversary farewell tour, this musical about Bohemians struggling with life, love, and AIDS in the East Village, won Larson the Pulitzer Prize and three Tony Awards posthumously. It ran on Broadway until 2008, and is the 11th longest running musical of all-time.

But early versions of “tick, tick…Boom!” came before  — and after. Playwright David Auburn revised it after Larson’s death as a piece for three actors (Jon, Susan, and Michael). It premiered off-Broadway in 2001, with Raul Esparza winning an Obie Award in the leading role. It has been performed in London’s West End, with Neil Patrick Harris, and at many other theaters since it was revamped. An Encores! Off-Center production in 2014 featured Miranda, Leslie Odom Jr. and Karen Olivo.

Miranda, who said seeing “Rent” on his 17th birthday changed his life, was born to direct this. He gets it – kids with dreams, brimming with ideas. He was one of those kids — and went on to win Tony Awards for “In the Heights” and the cultural phenomenon “Hamilton.” (You can spot him, too, at the diner. And his Disney animated musical “Encanto” is out in theaters Nov. 24).

As sad as Larson’s untimely death was, this film is full of joy – a tribute tp one of the great talents of the 20th century. Because his death is believed to have been caused by an undiagnosed Marfan syndrome, more attention has been given to this condition. (And the struggles of low-income folks lacking health care).

Today, the Jonathan Larson Performing Arts Foundation, established by family and friends, provides monetary grants to artists, with a particular emphasis on musical theatre composers and writers.

This support for creative work is now administered by the American Theatre Wing because of an endowment funded by his family and the foundation. Who knows how many fellow starving artists Larson inspired to write the next great American musical?

His memory and his impact lives on – and his “Rent” lyrics eerily resonate: “No Day but Today.”

“tick, tick…Boom!” is a bittersweet rumination on art and inspiration, and Miranda has made it both personal and universal.

“tick, tick…Boom!” is a 2021 Musical Biopic directed by Lin-Manuel Miranda and starring Andrew Garfield, Alexandra Shipp, Robin de Jesus, Joshua Henry, Bradley Whitford, and Judith Light. It is rated PG-13 for some strong language, some suggestive material and drug references and runs 1 hour, 55 minutes. It opened in select theaters on Nov. 12 and started streaming on Netflix Nov. 19. Lynn’s Grade: A.