I don’t know about you, but last year I was obsessed with the Netflix original movie To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before. So when the sequel came out, I knew I needed to watch it as soon as possible. I was a little bit nervous that it wouldn’t be as good as the first and, even though some parts weren’t that strong, I still adored this movie and I will binge it whenever I am able to. With all the cute romantic scenes, heart-breaking scenes, and just all of the adorkable scenes; I keep rewatching it. Now even though I love them both equally, I love the two movies for very different reasons. The first movie was an adorable rom-com: this shows us what happens after Lara Jean and Peter Kavinsky got together.
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One of my favorite things about this movie was seeing how Lara Jean’s and Peter’s relationship changed. Seeing Lara Jean unsure of how to act reminded me of my first relationship. I loved that she wasn’t sure if she was acting like a real girlfriend, because whenever I start a new relationship I always feel that way too. Seeing that portrayed so well in a movie made me so happy because we need to see more realistic representations of what it actually means to be in a relationship.
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Another thing that this movie did so well was deal with jealousy. In the last movie we saw the complicated relationship Lara Jean had with Gen. In the sequel this relationship gets even more complicated than it was before. It’s always hard to deal with your new partner’s ex, but it’s even harder to deal with them when they used to be your best friend. In this movie, we get to see Lara Jean deal with her jealousy of Gen in a normal way. Every time she does anything with Peter she is always thinking that he first did it with Gen. Eventually it gets to the point that Peter’s relationship with Gen pulls the two apart. It then takes Lara Jean realizing and accepting that Gen will always be in her life and will always be in Peter’s life. I really just loved how they dealt with this whole arc because they could have easily turned Gen into a character that we just hate, but they use her to show us how relationships can sometimes be tricky.
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This movie is filled with tricky relationships; the main one being John Ambrose, AKA the whole reason we got a sequel. John Ambrose is a boy Lara Jean went to middle school with. He’s also a boy she sent one of her love letters to. She thought he never received his letter but, to her surprise, he did. Eventually, John Ambrose sends Lara Jean a letter back and so begins an awkward love triangle that, in my opinion, makes no sense. We get a few scenes with Lara Jean and John Ambrose volunteering together at a retirement home and one scene with them in a treehouse with all their old friends. But with only those few times we saw them together, I couldn’t root for them as a couple. I don’t know if they have more going on in the book, but in this adaptation, their relationship felt flat and made no sense to me.
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Another character that I wish I could have seen more of was the old lady, Stormy. We met Stormy at the retirement home, and every interaction she had with Laura Jean left me wanting more. I loved how much of a boss she was, but even though she was an interesting new character, we didn’t get to see much of her. But I’m assuming that maybe, just like John Ambrose, she had a bigger part in the books than she did in the movie? I have yet to read the books, so this is yet to be seen.
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In the end, I still can’t help but recommend To All the Boys: P.S. I Still Love You. I love how they took characters that we already knew and loved and made them more relatable than ever before. So if you’re looking for something to watch, I highly recommend this movie, and if you have yet to watch the first one; trust me, you will need to take an afternoon to yourself (or with your girlfriends) and let yourself become obsessed just like me.