Review: To All the Boys I've Loved Before
"I write a letter when I have a crush so intense that I don't know what else to do," sixteen-year-old high school junior Lara Jean Covey (Lara Condor) confesses in the winning teen rom-com, To All the Boys I've Loved Before.
Expertly directed by Susan Johnson and adapted from Jenny Han's best-selling 2014 novel, To All the Boys I've Loved Before harks back to films like Sixteen Candles (of which it could be considered an update), Pretty in Pink, and the rest of the heartfelt , incisive and unsentimental films revolving around befuddled teens in love that John Hughes gifted moviegoers with back in the Eighties. Lara Jean is easily a character Molly Ringwald could have essayed - the smart and pretty girl who prefers to live in a world of romantic fantasies rather than have to deal with the messiness of real-life relationships. The letters she writes to her crushes are a way for her to have emotional closure rather than a means of getting those boys to notice her. So, whilst they are placed in envelopes that bear the addresses of those boys, they are never sent and instead are stored away, never to see the light of day. Except they somehow do and Lana finds herself deep in the drama.
Suddenly the girl who was once invisible is now very much the focus of attention and having to deal with the complications of having her feelings exposed, especially when it comes to two boys in particular. One is Josh (Israel Broussard), her most recent crush who was her childhood best friend before he became her older sister Margot's (Janel Parrish) boyfriend. The other is Peter Kavinsky (Noah Centineo), whom she briefly liked in middle school before he became the boyfriend of her former BFF and current popular mean girl Gen (Emilija Baranac). Panicked at the prospect of having the recently dumped Josh confront her about the letter, she hatches a plan with Peter, himself newly ditched by Gen. She and Peter will pretend to be a couple - that way, she can throw Josh off the scent and Peter can win back Gen by making her jealous. Naturally, genuine feelings begin to develop as Lara Jean and Peter carry on their pretend romance.
It's all very been there, done that and yet Condor and Centineo are such charming performers that the well-trod story feels refreshed and reinvigorated. Combine that with Johnson's steady direction and Sofia Alvarez's screenplay, both of which maintain an easy rhythm and a tone that never veers into the snarky or cynical, and To All the Boys I've Before is the rare throwback that manages to feel both old-fashioned yet very much of its time.
To All the Boys I've Loved Before
Directed by: Susan Johnson
Written by: Sofia Alvarez; based on the novel by Jenny Han
Starring: Lana Condor, Noah Centineo, Israel Broussard, Janel Parrish, Anna Cathcart, John Corbett
