For all you high schoolers dying to see a piece of yourself on TV or in a movie, just wait a hot minute. Netflix clearly has decided you are part of their target audience, so they’ll get around to you sooner or later. Up this week: half Korean middle children. To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before hits the beats you want the movie to hit, but like it’s lead, it takes a different route to get there, freshening up a genre that had previously gone stale.
Lara Jean (Lana Condor) is the middle child of 3 girls raised by a single dad, Mr. Covey (John Corbett). The girls are very close: Lara Jean and the youngest Kitty (Anna Cathcart) are saddened that their sister Margot (Janel Parrish) is going to Europe for college. Lara Jean is also sad because she had a crush on Margot’s boyfriend Josh (Israel Broussard), whom Margot dumped so he isn’t around anymore. To cope, Lara Jean writes a letter to Josh that she doesn’t mail and keeps in her private things. She does this for all 5 of her ex boyfriends, including Lucas (Trezzo Mahoro) and Peter (Noah Centineo): it’s Lara Jean’s coping mechanism….that Kitty mails to each of the 5 boys. Oops!
Very rom comy set up, for sure. But To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before takes little mini diversions from the standard formula that will keep you going “Hmmm, oh? Didn’t see that coming” With this rom com setup, we expect to get intros to all the boys, assuming they will play a part in this tale. Except they don’t, and our story then shifts to a love triangle between Peter, Lara Jean, and Peter’s ex and Lara Jean’s nemesis Gen (Emilija Baranjac), which involves a fake relationship. That relationship then becomes the focus of the story for a while…until Josh and Margot return, throwing a curveball into the family dynamics. By now, we’ve got all sorts of stories going on for Lara Jean, all of which earn their time by establishing the relationships between the characters early in the movie. So if you don’t like the high school drama, no worries, there’s a family drama upcoming, or, maybe another boy will enter the story and flip it. This story jumping sometimes is detrimental (the character of Josh is the biggest loser), but overall it give To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before a forward momentum and anticipation usually lacking in standard high school rom com stories.
Helping make the movie exciting are the two leads, Lara Jean and Peter. Lana Condor hasn’t had lots of big parts before, but she’s good enough as the audience cipher. Condor has lots of stuff happen to her, and she innocently and sweetly captures you with her confused but strong inner monologue. Noah Centineo is even better as Peter. At the beginning, we see he’s basically a hunky perfect high school boy toy to Lara Jean. But as Peter and Lara spend time together, Peter starts peeling back layers of his onion, revealing a deep emotional enigma under those big lacrosse shoulders. Condor and Centineo are cute onscreen and give just enough “oh la la” to keep the teenagers engaged, but not enough to make the movie raunchy. On hand to help the two is a pretty deep bench, but a mixed bench. The highlights are John Corbett, who gets the requisite monologue you know is coming, Anna Catchcart is delightful as the princess of the family, and Madeleine Arthur is fun as Lara’s free spirited best friend.
As lovely as it is to see Korean Americans represented onscreen like this, To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before carries a story that is specific and ubiquitous. First loves, sibling rivalries, high school drama. This should sound familiar to every person watching this movie. You may not write letters to your past loves like Lara Jean does, but a diary maybe? Blog post? Sounds like me and my friends, for sure. Netflix thinks so too, FINALLY with a good product to show for it.