To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before | Netflix Film Review

Romantic comedies, there are so many out there, and a lot of them are a rehash of a better one done a few years before. They rarely feel probable, and often can set the viewer up with a false sense of what is possible out there in the real world. I know, you can say that about any movie genre, stop pointing at my beloved comic book movies and giving me “the eye”, I get it, pot to kettle, moving on. Netflix has recently released the newest addition to the rom-com genre, To All the Boys I Loved Before, so let us take a dip in these waters and see where this rates in the Annals of Romantic Comedy-ness (it’s a thing trust me).

Lara Jean Covey tends to develop very intense crushes. That’s fine because she has found a very therapeutic and safe way to manage her feelings; she writes letters to her crushes and then puts them in a box for safe keeping. What’s weird about this is, I – the writer of this review – did the very same thing growing up! Which to make it even weirder, I am a dude, and back then I was dreadfully shy and suffered from very intense crushes, so already I’m identifying with the protagonist.

Moving on, Lara Jean has two sisters, and the loss of their mother has driven them closer together. Margot, Lara Jean’s eldest sister, is leaving for college – taking a page out of her mother’s advice book – and breaks up with her boyfriend (and Lara Jean’s best friend) Josh. It should be noted that Josh has a letter with his name on it in Lara Jean’s Box. From there the story gets interesting, Lara Jean’s letters get mailed out accidentally on purpose with the best of intentions, and suddenly Lara Jean has to do damage control to ensure she protects Josh and Margot’s feelings. (phew … almost done) Now enter Peter, the now popular kid which Lara Jean had a crush on way back when everyone was much less popular. She uses him, he uses her, it’s all too damn cute from there.

Typing all that out feels like I’m writing some sort of fan-fiction using all the best elements of every single rom-com from the last 30 years. I say “feels” because try as I may, I can’t put my finger on any one element and trace it back to its progenitor. Sure, they reference Pretty in Pink, Lara Jean’s other best friend Chris dresses like Molly Ringwald, but it’s all put together in a way that comes across as brand new. I could be getting soft in my old age but there’s something else I noticed, in many of these rom-coms you see the couple go through some dumb crap. Often times, they end and I shake my fist at the sky cursing all of these movies for creating terrible relationships with garbage as a foundation, but in this movie, I was left with a smile and a sense of hope.

Lana Condor plays Lara Jean, which has been a real problem for me so far because I’ve had to do a find/replace for Lana to Lara three times, and now that I am actually addressing Lana and not Lara I have no choice but to be extremely careful. To All the Boys I Loved Before is only her 4th credit on her acting resume, and I dearly hope it is not her last. She was endearing and engaging, easily believable and capable of carrying this movie. Anna Cathcart plays Kitty, Lara Jean’s youngest sister, and she lights up every scene she is in. Emilija Baranac plays Jen the “Villain”…maybe. Even though she’s the girl you are supposed to hate, you sort of don’t, you get it as she’s a flighty teenager, she pulled it off well.

So, now we are to Noah Centineo, a charming and engaging actor who does something distracting, though still effective. If you were around in the late 80s, early 90s you may remember the gem given to us in Christian Slater. As a young actor it is painfully obvious he watched Jack Nicholson on the big screen and said: “I want to be him when I grow up!” Try and try he did, and though the 80s and 90s loved him, it got old and tired, and he couldn’t keep it up. Now back to Noah, HE IS DISTRACTINGLY LIKE MARK RUFFALO! But, in a good way, I guess. They have the very same charm, mannerisms, and essential looks. It’s like they share a family tree. Ok enough about that, as a whole this cast is wonderfully believable. They feel like real people, telling a real story. Not once does it come across as fake or exaggerated, I never had to set aside any disbelief to make this story work.

TATBILB’s (it’s an acronym as I only have one more fully typed out title left in me) production team just has one job to do, and that is to not get in the way of the story and actors. They pulled it off and to boot, they gave me some more ideas of places to vacation with the beautiful views they threw in for those of us with 4k TVs.

Look, if you ask me on the street, I will tell you to your face a bold lie: I don’t like rom-coms. To be honest, the truth is probably closer to; I don’t like rom-coms that end on really rocky ground and the two participants should probably go to therapy before being in a relationship. Even truer, I love rom-coms I can see myself in, and To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before felt like a joyous journey of self-reflection.