Ten years after the first “Bar Boys,” “After School” reunites its quartet as they navigate adulthood, legal careers, and the compromises life demands. The film is moving, sometimes quietly inspirational. It exposes the cost of following one’s dreams and reminds us that life is bigger than school.
Watching “Bar Boys: After School” often feels like being handed a puzzle without the reference image — pieces arriving out of order, some clearly from a different section, others demanding to be forced into place. From the start, the film is busy in a way that feels less dynamic than anxious. It wants to be many things at once: a social critique, a character reckoning, a legal drama, a moral inquiry. The result is a narrative so overworked it nearly collapses under its own sense of importance.
For a good stretch of its two-hour-plus runtime, the film plays like a procedural without a clear crime. I found myself piecing together timelines, motivations, and emotional gaps, wondering where these characters had been and whether the film still cared enough to show us. The 10-year time jump cuts both ways. You could follow this film without ever seeing the first one, and that’s exactly the problem. By trying to make everything clear, it skips over the hard work of showing its characters’ growth, leaving parts of the story abandoned.
The film’s dialogue doesn’t help. Too often, it mistakes clarity for bluntness. Subtext is sacrificed in favor of declaration, most glaringly in a scene where a nepo baby announces his status with all the subtlety of a case digest. It’s the kind of moment that feels written to be quoted rather than felt. When the film turns preachy, its sincerity wobbles. Lines land stiffly, as if the actors are being compelled to deliver lessons rather than inhabit moments. The disconnect between performance and text becomes hard to ignore.
And yet, despite all this, the film eventually remembers what it’s actually good at.
When “After School” stops explaining itself and lets its characters breathe, it works. The film finds grace in scenes that use Filipino naturally, where conversations sound lived-in and unpolished, where emotion isn’t underlined but allowed to surface. School is still part of their lives, but it’s no longer the only thing that matters.
Carlo Aquino lights up every scene he’s in; there’s just something magnetic about him you can’t look away from. Rocco Nacino, as usual, is criminally underrated here; he’s effortless, natural, the kind of presence that makes even the messiest scenes feel watchable. Sassa Gurl impresses, particularly in a one-shot recitation scene that, while imperfect, holds because the conviction beneath it is real. And Will Ashley, unsurprisingly, is a gift to Philippine cinema. If the film has a heart for victims of injustice, Ashley is the blood pumping through it, raw and unrelenting.
I questioned the film’s sincerity more than once. I considered stepping out during stretches that felt dutiful rather than inspired. But I stayed. And somewhere near the end, the pieces finally began to align. The pieces never all fall neatly into place. It’s clumsy, it’s messy, and yet, it got me. I cried. Several times.
It takes far too long for “After School” to find its rhythm. The film circles its ideas, rearranges themes, and only late in the game does it trust itself enough to settle. When it does, the payoff is undeniable. For all its excess, this is one of the most important Filipino films of 2025.
“Bar Boys: After School” is exhausting and often frustrating. But in the end, it’s a mess worth solving.