To All the Boys: Always and Forever
We first met Lara Jean Covey back in 2018 in the Netflix original To All The Boys I've Loved Before. In the world of Lara Jean, we were exposed to Wes Anderson styled baking scenes, bright colors, and perfect penmanship. The perfectly put together Lara Jean unexpectedly falls in love with high school hottie Peter Kavinsky and their journey spans throughout the trilogy. The final chapter in Jenny Han's YA trilogy, To All the Boys: Always and Forever, wraps the story of Lara Jean and Peter in a predictable, tight little bow.
Lara Jean and Peter are in their senior year after making it through the obstacles of a teenage relationship and are now ready to be college sweethearts at Stanford. Being the dreamer she is, Lara Jean can picture the rest of their lives together through a fantasy sequence that shows marriage, pregnancy, and Lara Jean releasing her first book. When she presses refresh to see her Stanford application status her plans are derailed as the words "we regret to inform you" stare back at her.
Since her entire existence is based around her boyfriend, she quickly comes up with a plan to go to a neighboring college in order to keep her plans that revolve around Peter instead of her self intact. A new threat comes to their safety plan when a class trip to New York piques Lara Jean's interest in NYU. The worst thing in Lara Jean's life is the thought of being on the opposite side of the country, away from her boyfriend. If you are looking for any substance in this generic teen story; you might want to look somewhere else.
It is interesting to see how Netflix uses this trope in their YA films where the couple is going to college and their only options are Stanford, Berkeley, and NYU. It makes no sense that they get into these top schools without any scenes of studying or emphasis on school. And the way these schools are defined as Stanford with the tree hat, Berkeley is mentioned being close but nothing else (the fact of being the #1 public school in America is never brought up), and the most cliché, romanticized version of NYU. On top of that Lara Jean and Peter never specify why they want to go to these schools' they are just places to them.
The main problem in this entire film is how Lara Jean is stripped to being a main character. In the three films, Lara Jean never seems to change but everyone around her does and becomes more interesting than her. Their relationship never seems to progress; it is evident that she still has some reservations in the relationship and never feels confident to tell him the truth sometimes. In this film she pulls out all the stops to keep her man from a box of trinkets to an awkward attempted sex scene where Peter says the most cringe line of the film. They have the chemistry but the charm from the first film is slowly dying. Like many sitcom main characters; all her problems could be solved with a conversation.
The first film in this franchise seemed like a refresh in the rom-com genre, but after two sequels it falls into the same, predictable motions we see time and time again. The ending could be a YouTube collage of the best moments from the franchise. Since all the emotions were missing in this film; it relies on the past moments between Lara Jean and Peter to spark what is missing in the 2 hours we sat through. This wasn't the proper sendoff.