It was always going to be a hard task for To All The Boys: P.S. I Love You to succeed. The original film, To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, came seemingly out of nowhere to become one of Netflix’s biggest hits and one of the best films of the decade. That’s a lot for a sequel to live up to and despite some very winning moments, To All The Boys: P.S. I Love You struggles to find an impact.
You would be surprised that keeping up the pretense of a fake relationship is actually easier than being in a real one. Peter (Noah Centineo) and Lara Jean (the amazing Lana Condor) find this out during the events of this movie as their relationship is challenged from all sides. First, there are the general relationship pains and aches, some miscommunication here, some leftover jealousy there, the ever presence of Gen, former friend and ex of Peter. But more pressingly is the return of John Ambrose (Jordan Fisher), a boy from her past and one of the five boys she wrote a letter to. Now grown up and volunteering with her at Bellevue, he presents Lara Jean with an alternate to the life she’s currently living and forces her to make a choice about where her love will lie.
What continues to astound me about the To All the Boys franchise is the ability of the movie to get what high school was like while maintaining an adult maturity. Lara Jean’s questions about her relationships, the conversations she has with Stormy (the brilliant Holland Taylor), and most importantly, the conversations and trepidations she’s allowed to have about sex, really speak to this movie taking care with the characters and the validity of their feelings. I find great comfort in the fact that teens will have a movie like this where no one is truly put down for any choice they decide to make.
This ability makes the missteps the movie makes all the more glaring. It seemed that To All The Boys: P.S. I Love You was more concerned with the points on the journey than the journey itself. Where the first movie felt perfectly paced, this film blows through the plot, even as it feels like it takes an hour to truly get going. How does this movie not stop to interrogate how Peter might have known who leaked the video of them in the hot tub? How did Lara Jean not want to beat down the person who did it? There are significant bombshells dropped left and right and the movie moves right along. Even with John Ambrose, thrillingly realized by Jordan Fisher, the movie seems to only need him to be around for plot reasons. If Lara Jean is going to make an ultimate decision in this film to choose Peter, what was the point of him or what is the point of the third movie? Ultimately, To All The Boys: P.S. I Love You lets us know that it was filled with nothing but manufactured tension and the ending damn near invalidates what came before.