To All The Boys I've Loved Before... Thoughts/rant/rambles
08/19/2018
( I was going to review insatiable, but everyone's has already said everything wrong with that show, and while I believe show isn't as bad as 13 reasons. At least Insatiable is more a fun watch, but like I said I don't really have anything new to add to the conversation so...) (I promise the next blog review will be more organized)
Also this post is really rambly and a bit ranty, at the time of first writing this I just finished the movie and all these ideas were fresh in my mind. I put a TL;DR at bottom with my thoughts more simple put.)
I was really excited for this movie, I thought it would be a cheesy sickly sweet romance movie like everyday, or everything, everything which are too movie I really enjoy despite their cheesy-ness. But To all the boys iv ever loved wasn't like that at all. It was just you average "let's pretend we're in a relationship, but let's not really fall in love " type story..
The basic plot is Lara Jean Covey is a 16 year old girl who left gets turn upside down when the love letter she wrote to every boy she had a crush on get send out mysteriously one of the boys who gets a letter is her sister's old bf, Josh who the sister dump because she was going to college in Scotland and wanted to focus on her studies. To avoid talking to Josh and explaining her feels like an actual human being, Lara insteads just Mack's on a nearby boy who she also had a crush on Peter. From then on she starts to date Peter to make it look like she likes him instead of Josh. Peter goes along with it so he can make his Ex girlfriend jealous. As time goes on Peter and Lara start developing feeling for each other and so on...( You know how it goes..)
While I don't have a problem the basic plot itself it's fine, although when I first heard just the shorter verison of the trailer and the plot. I thought she would had to go through multiple boys to find her true love, but that would be too complex. The problem is that we don't really get to see Lara and Peter's relationship grow. like at the start of the fake relationship Lara and Peter's make a pact to not actually kiss because Lara wants to save it for the real thing, but then literally a few scenes later they are making out in the hot tub. The movie really wants you to believe Lara and Peter's have chemistry, but it's just not there, and it's not like the actor/ress(s) are bad (both the boys are really cute, btw). It's just nothing. Lara tells the audience she's becoming more comfortable around Peter and his friends but it only shows one scene of that. They also try to push them being together as a good idea because they both lost their parents Oof...so I guess they have to kiss now. The movie also similar to the kissing booth because the way it's written is like something out of fanfic ( I actually wrote a fan fiction with the same plot line when I was younger). The way Peter talks especially shows, like he doesn't talk like a real teenager he talk like what a teenage girl would like a boy to talk to them. Another thing is that this movie uses the misunderstanding trope alot...like alot. In the last have of the movie they use it at least 3 times. The movie tries to write it off by Lara saying she can't really trust people because they end up leaving like her mom did. That would be okay...if her mom actually made the conscious decision to leave, but her mom died...she didn't actually get up and leave her family, and it's not like she or either of her sisters nor her father had a bad relationship with the mother. They remember her fondly. So saying that Lara can't trust people because she afraid that she'll leave isn't really a good reason when nobody (except for Peter's Ex, who used to be friend with Lara in middle School) left her.
The book the movie is based on seems have got in different direction in the book, Josh admits he had/has feelings for Lara and her feelings go back for the between Peter and Josh until she realizes she like Peter more. There's actually a whole series of books for TATBILB. Which I guess the plot is way more flesh out and realizes.
I feel like this movie is going to get a lot of praise for having a diverse cast, bit no so much for the writing because if the movie didn't have a colorful cast I don't think anyone would pay it no mind
At the end of the day, isn't as bad as the kissing booth, I just expected more from it. It's an okay movie if just want to cute movie with shallow drama that mostly resolved as quickly as it brought up.
(TL;DR I expected the movie to have more a plot, but then again the movie didn't have a enough cheesy sweet fluff for me to feel satisfied or care about the mains. If you read the book the movie probably makes more sense and means more, the movie is decent but nothing I've not seen before..)
Star rating:
3.3/5 stars
Overall mood/opinion: