Film Review: <em>To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before</em>
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Netflix seems to always be adding a new tally in it’s win box, but it has truly been on a roll with romantic comedies. From The Kissing Booth to Set It Up, the media company has shown a willingness to sheperd and develop a genre that seems to have fallen out with major studios. Alongside Awesomeness Films, they have brought To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before to the screen and this movie might be the crown jewel of this romcom renaissance. Incredibly funny and heartfelt with star making turns from Lana Condor and Noah Centineo, this movie is just a delight from start to finish.
And there’s no way the movie wouldn’t be enjoyable with the wacky premise it presents. Laura Jean Covey is a rising junior and like many high school students (or people in general) has crushes. Rather than deal with her feelings out loud, she has resorted to writing love letters as a fantasy and storing them away in her closet. However, one day she is confronted by three of the men she wrote about, bearing the letters she had hoped they’d never find, including her sister’s ex-boyfriend (Israel Broussard) and Peter Kavinsky, who in the wake of breaking up with his girlfriend (Laura’s nemesis) offers her a fun proposition.
To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before starts incredibly cliche (this is not a bad thing) and becomes vividly revolutionary. The screenwriter Sofia Alvarez uses very familiar tropes of teen movies to ground us in the story, and for a while the movie feels content to hum along with them. This in turn affects the style of the movie, with the direction of Susan Johnson being composed, but not terribly special (there’s a lot of shot reverse shot here).
But as the film goes along, the movie starts shedding off the familiar beats in favor of much more interesting storytelling. There’s frank discussions about sex and sexuality, and yet none of the characters has a storyline about being pressured to have sex, ends up pregnant, or is threatened with rape. There’s many love interests in the film and yet the movie decidedly didn’t go the way I thought it would. And above all, the movie respects each of it’s characters, never letting them dip into caricature. The feelings expressed by the characters are real and the movie doesn’t shy away from deep topics because the kids are young. While the dialogue sometimes rise above what one envisions these kids would say, the movie never doubts for a second that kids talk about serious topics as much as they talk about fun ones. It’s here that Johnson’s direction picks up, her blocking of actors and placement within the frame more crucial, and To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before becomes a really special story. It’s a credit to Alvarez and Johnson that they can accomplish all this, give us strong representation, and still have the movie be hilarious.
Johnson and Alvarez are aided in the fact that they have two great young actors in Condor and Centineo to portray Laura and Peter. Centineo has a tough part to play, being both part deamboat and real person, and he blends the character’s nervousness and changing feelings with ease. It’s adorable watching him try and navigate the world as the sensitive jock, but never making us feel like he’s not real. Lana Condor is a damn revelation as Laura, the heroine of our story. She brings such an easy vulnerability to the part, but never lets the character not be strong. Laura Jean might be dealing with a weird situation, but she gets the full range of emotions and consideration, and this is a credit to how Lana plays her.
I could continue to rave about this movie, but instead will just thoroughly encourage you to watch it when it shows up on Netflix this Friday.
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