Movie Review: 'Afterlife of the Party' Starring Victoria Justice

When he’s trying, director Stephen Herek is not a bad director. However, when he clearly doesn’t care, he makes dreadful movies such as Man of the House starring Tommy Lee Jones or The Chaperone starring professional wrestler Paul ‘Triple H’ Leveque. Afterlife of the Party falls somewhere between Herek’s best work, Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure and his more mercenary yet watchable work such as Rock Star or Mr Holland’s Opus.

Afterlife of the Party stars Victoria Justice as Cassie, a party girl and party planner celebrating her 25th birthday. While Cassie loves to party and get drunk her lifelong best friend Lisa (Midori Francis) prefers the comfort of home and plenty of sleep before work. This conflict of personality comes to a head on Cassie’s birthday when Lisa feels left out and wants to go home and Cassie refuses to let the party end.

The best friends have a massive falling out and appear ready to leave each other for good, despite sharing an expensive apartment together. When Cassie finally does come home from the party, she regrets the fight but Lisa stubbornly refuses to let her apologize. Then the worst happens, Cassie wakes up with a serious hangover and, with no one around to help, she stumbles in the bathroom, whacks her head on the toilet and dies.

Waking up somewhere between heaven and hell, Cassie is told by Val (Robyn Scott) that she has died but she hasn’t gone up or down just yet. Cassie is among the millions of people who have work left to do on Earth before the afterlife decides what to do with them. Cassie’s task is to resolve her problems with Lisa, with her father, Howie (Adam Garcia), and her mother, Sofia (Gloria Garcia), before she can get to heaven.

She must do all of this despite not being able to interact with them in any way. Or, at least that’s the challenge initially. It appears that the makers of Afterlife of the Party wrote themselves into a corner with that caveat and thus simply reversed court and gave Cassie the magic power to be able to speak to, hug and generally interact with Lisa. It’s explained that this is very rare and that the two must be soulmates for this to have happened.

Realistically, the filmmakers realized that having Cassie unable to interact with any of the other characters was far too much of a challenge so they changed the rules. It’s not a bad idea, just one that feels shoddy in presentation. You can sense there wasn’t much thought given to how to play all of this story out and while that sense of spontaneity isn’t bad, it’s sloppy and Afterlife of the Party is undeniably sloppy.

With that being said, I can’t completely dismiss this lightweight little movie. What Afterlife of the Party does well is hone in on the tragedy of a 25 year old woman who died too young. There are genuine moments of pathos in this silly little comedy and while too much time is spent on silly things like Cassie’s teleportation powers, her constantly interrupting Lisa in important moments and other such bits of comic business, I couldn’t help but feel for Justice’s take on Cassie.

Especially strong are the performances of Adam Garcia and Gloria Garcia as Cassie’s parents. The complicated relationship between Cassie and her mother has genuine honesty to it that won me over. Adam Garcia, on the other hand, delivers an earnest performance as a goofy dad who loves yoga and goes into a tailspin following his daughter’s death. There is genuine poignancy to his scenes late in the movie that I wasn’t expecting and I was pleasantly surprised to find myself touched by his work.

Afterlife of the Party is a mostly mediocre and derivative comedy but in several moments the film finds genuine, undeniable emotion. I can’t say I love it or give it a big recommendation but if you are a fan of dopey feel good comedy with notes of genuine, honest, pathos, You could do far worse than Afterlife of the Party.