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To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, 2018
Lara Jean (Lana Condor) loves the idea of romance, but finds the reality a bit intimidating. When her older sister, Margot (Janel Parrish) movies overseas to go to college, Lara Jean must come to terms with the crush she has on Margot’s boyfriend, Josh (Israel Brussard). As she always has done with crushes, Lara Jean copes with her emotions by writing a love letter to Josh and then adding it to a secret box of such letters. But when Lara Jean’s letters get mysteriously sent to all of her former (and current!) crushes, she must deal with the fallout, including being part of a fake relationship with former crush Peter (Noah Centineo).
Funny, full of heart, and empathetic to all of its teenage characters, this teen rom-com is a winner.
There’s something a bit magical about the way that this film weaves wacky premises and scenarios in with very real teenage dynamics and social pressures. It gives the film permission to be silly, while at the same time keeping itself grounded in the reality for many teenagers. Take a very fantasy sequence where Lara Jean and Peter have a deep conversation that eventually leads to Lara Jean wading into a hot tub in her lacy nightgown for a sweet makeout session. Very “only in the movies.” Except that a classmate has taken footage of the event and posts it to Instagram. Shattered, Lara Jean eventually turns to her sister for help, who then helps her contact Instagram to have the post removed. (Does this fully make the footage go away? Nope.) This feels cinematic and realistic in a very appealing way.
Holding the center of the film in a wonderful way is Condor. Her Lara Jean is determined yet vulnerable. She’s a protagonist who makes mistakes and sometimes acts in selfish ways, but is receptive to learning and growing as a person. In a scene that’s, again, very “movie-ish”, Lara Jean runs into Peter and then plants a long kiss on him to deter another guy who got one of her letters from approaching her. When Peter and Lara Jean are hashing out the boundaries of their fake relationship and she says she doesn’t want kissing to be part of it, Peter (nicely, but firmly) calls out the fact that Lara Jean kissed him without permission. Lara Jean is operating in a social system where there is hypocrisy that runs both ways, but the film doesn’t hesitate to call her out when she is making sexist assumptions.
The supporting cast is also very good and very funny. While I thought that she was written a bit too sassy, Anna Cathcart has some solid line deliveries as Lara Jean’s little sister, Kitty. John Corbett brings warmth and an adult presence as Lara Jean’s single dad. A scene where he tries to give her “the talk” before she heads out for an overnight ski trip, culminating in handing her a manilla envelope full of condoms made me laugh out loud.
Overall I just really loved the empathy that this film had for its characters. These are kids trying to figure things out, and they all have their own (non-romantic) issues that they’re dealing with. The movie uses Lara Jean’s romance-novel-derived ideas about love to probe the challenges of being in a real relationship, and specifically the challenge of finding a way to trust a person with your emotions because of how that trust makes you vulnerable.
This is probably one of my favorite teen rom-coms that I’ve seen in the last decade. Just very sweet and funny.
To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, 2018
Lara Jean (Lana Condor) loves the idea of romance, but finds the reality a bit intimidating. When her older sister, Margot (Janel Parrish) movies overseas to go to college, Lara Jean must come to terms with the crush she has on Margot’s boyfriend, Josh (Israel Brussard). As she always has done with crushes, Lara Jean copes with her emotions by writing a love letter to Josh and then adding it to a secret box of such letters. But when Lara Jean’s letters get mysteriously sent to all of her former (and current!) crushes, she must deal with the fallout, including being part of a fake relationship with former crush Peter (Noah Centineo).
Funny, full of heart, and empathetic to all of its teenage characters, this teen rom-com is a winner.
There’s something a bit magical about the way that this film weaves wacky premises and scenarios in with very real teenage dynamics and social pressures. It gives the film permission to be silly, while at the same time keeping itself grounded in the reality for many teenagers. Take a very fantasy sequence where Lara Jean and Peter have a deep conversation that eventually leads to Lara Jean wading into a hot tub in her lacy nightgown for a sweet makeout session. Very “only in the movies.” Except that a classmate has taken footage of the event and posts it to Instagram. Shattered, Lara Jean eventually turns to her sister for help, who then helps her contact Instagram to have the post removed. (Does this fully make the footage go away? Nope.) This feels cinematic and realistic in a very appealing way.
Holding the center of the film in a wonderful way is Condor. Her Lara Jean is determined yet vulnerable. She’s a protagonist who makes mistakes and sometimes acts in selfish ways, but is receptive to learning and growing as a person. In a scene that’s, again, very “movie-ish”, Lara Jean runs into Peter and then plants a long kiss on him to deter another guy who got one of her letters from approaching her. When Peter and Lara Jean are hashing out the boundaries of their fake relationship and she says she doesn’t want kissing to be part of it, Peter (nicely, but firmly) calls out the fact that Lara Jean kissed him without permission. Lara Jean is operating in a social system where there is hypocrisy that runs both ways, but the film doesn’t hesitate to call her out when she is making sexist assumptions.
The supporting cast is also very good and very funny. While I thought that she was written a bit too sassy, Anna Cathcart has some solid line deliveries as Lara Jean’s little sister, Kitty. John Corbett brings warmth and an adult presence as Lara Jean’s single dad. A scene where he tries to give her “the talk” before she heads out for an overnight ski trip, culminating in handing her a manilla envelope full of condoms made me laugh out loud.
Overall I just really loved the empathy that this film had for its characters. These are kids trying to figure things out, and they all have their own (non-romantic) issues that they’re dealing with. The movie uses Lara Jean’s romance-novel-derived ideas about love to probe the challenges of being in a real relationship, and specifically the challenge of finding a way to trust a person with your emotions because of how that trust makes you vulnerable.
This is probably one of my favorite teen rom-coms that I’ve seen in the last decade. Just very sweet and funny.