To All the Boys: Always and Forever Review

This Valentine's Day some of us watched the new movie that Netflix released, the third part in the To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before series. Was it just me or did anyone else find themselves crying about how lonely they are because of this movie? I couldn’t have been the only one. Well all jokes aside, this was a great way to close the curtain on the famous movie series.

In the first movie, the main character; Lara Jean really wants is a boyfriend. Instead of expressing her feelings to her crushes, she wrote them love letters that she never sent. Everything is nice and quiet in her life until her little sister, Kitty, finds the letters and sends them. One of her crushes is her older sister’s ex-boyfriend -Josh-and another one of them being the most popular guy in school; Peter. Peter decides to confront Lara Jean about the letter. At first, LJ is extremely confused, but then she notices the letter in his hand. Soon her sister’s ex; Josh, is walking towards her as well. In panicked confusion, she kisses Peter. Peter decides to use this opportunity to get back at his ex by creating a fake relationship with Lara Jean. She reluctantly agreed to it and later found her own benefits. Little did they know this fake relationship would blossom into true love. Later in the second movie, their love is challenged when another one of LJ’s former crushes comes to town with his old letter. Lara Jean is left wondering if Peter is really the one for her, but again their love prevails.

By now we can probably tell that Peter and LJ are endgame. However, in the third movie, the challenges of long-distance await them. The couple is planning on going to Stanford together. Nevertheless, college acceptances are absolutely unpredictable. When Lara Jean gets rejected, they make a new plan for her to go to Berkeley and transfer to Stanford after a year. Everything seems like it's going well, but on the senior class trip to New York, Lara Jean falls in love with the busy streets of the city. Now she doesn’t know which path to take. One road leads her to NYU and risks her relationship with Peter and the other leads her to Berkley; a college she doesn’t love. Unlike the other movies, the conflicts created by long-distance are much harder to deal with. It makes you question whether Lara Jean and Peter’s relationship will really last forever.

My favorite part about the movie is the on-screen chemistry between Lana Condor and Noah Centineo. They really made Peter and LJ look and feel like the perfect couple. They also both did a great job acting out the internal conflicts that tore apart the characters. We got to see more of Peter’s relationship with his dad in this movie and Noah made their encounters very emotional. The creative choices were perfectly tailored to the main themes of the movie. They used a lot of visual cues to imply the emotions of the characters. Like in most movies, the colors of the costumes add a direct line to the characters’ emotions. The sets were very aesthetically pleasing and the light colors gave the movie a nicer feel. What I didn’t like was the movie was entirely spotlighted on love which is understandable because it is a romance. However, all the romance can be too much for one person to handle. The movie was broken up into the different parts of Lara Jean’s senior year and every single one of the parts about love. It would’ve been nice to see something that wasn’t about it to create balance. That is just my personal preference. Everything that I read or watch has to have a little sentiment, but I don’t love it when romance is the only theme.

I would totally recommend this movie to all of the hopeless romantics out there. I absolutely loved it, but people who don’t like romance probably won’t like it. The movie gave me hope that I won’t be single forever. Maybe all I need to do is send love letters to my crushes. Don’t forget that this is a hard-core romance, so brace yourself for cringing. If you’re a romantic like Lara Jean, expect some tears. This is the perfect movie to watch on February 14th, and I know that I’ll be watching it every year.