This is the third and potentially final film to the hit, Netflix series that began with
To All the Boys I've Loved Before (2018). The series centers on a young Asian-American girl and her romantic life, especially her relationship with one boy in particular. The previous films had her relationship with this boy be complicated by her feelings for other guys. This film complicates her relationship with the same boy by her feelings for... a city. As strange as that sounds, it's not. It's actually a full circle moment to something that happens in the first scene of that 2018 flick. There's also a full circle moment to a scene that happens about 30 minutes into that 2018 rom-com, as a way of wrapping up this whole thing. One could generously say they're callbacks. A non-generous interpretation could just say that the filmmakers here are just being lazy and repetitive.
It wasn't an issue as I was watching, but, there's a scene toward the end where it's revealed the teenage characters are graduating from high school and they're the class of 2021. This film was shot during the summer of 2019, long before the coronavirus pandemic hit and COVID-19 changed life all over the planet, especially in the United States. Yes, there are a good number of films and TV shows that are practically ignoring the coronavirus pandemic, but, seeing it here took me out of the reality of this film. Even though things are possibly getting better, the school scenes in this film are not what they would be in 2021, maskless and without social distancing.
Lana Condor reprises her breakout role of Lara Jean Covey, a Korean-American girl who is 18. She lives with her father and sisters in Portland, Oregon. She has an older sister and a younger sister. Her mother died, which caused her to have some issues. She's a bit shy and unassuming, a bit of a bookworm and obsessed with old romantic movies, but meek and mild-mannered.
In the first film, her older sister was off to college in Scotland in the United Kingdom. Before her sister left, she broke up with her boyfriend of a couple of years and she did so in that aforementioned first scene in the 2018 flick. Lara Jean was 16 then. Now, two years later, Lara Jean is rearing to go to college herself, just like her sister before her. The full circle moment is that Lara Jean is in the same position as her sister. The question is if Lara Jean's boyfriend of a couple of years will go the way of her sister's boyfriend of a couple of years and if history truly will repeat itself.
Noah Centineo reprises his role of Peter Kavinsky, the tall, handsome jock who became Lara Jean's boyfriend. He's a lacrosse player who's popular and charming. Like Lara Jean, he also lost a parent. Peter lost his father. Yet, Peter's father didn't die. His father is alive. Peter's father simply abandoned him, his mother and his brother. The film tries to address that issue by introducing Peter's father. Unfortunately, Peter's father doesn't appear until the end and his presence feels really tacked on or perfunctory. It feels there only to give some parity to Peter who feels mostly ignored or a non-entity in this film.
Lara Jean is applying to colleges. She applies to three schools. She applies to Stanford University, UC Berkeley and NYU. These are top and close to Ivy League schools. Most students dream of applying to top schools. Obviously, it's about whether or not the schools will accept them. It's also about whether or not the students who apply can afford it. Yet, that's not a question here. Money doesn't seem to be an object for Lara Jean or anyone here, so if that's not an obstacle, it lessens the impact of certain things. It also raises questions about Lara Jean's decision-making.
She wants to be an English major or English literature major. If money is clearly no object, then it would make sense for her to apply to actual Ivy League schools like Harvard, Yale or Columbia. Yet, she doesn't or if she does, we don't hear about it. We only hear about the three schools of Stanford, Berkeley and NYU. Why those three specific schools? We know why she applies to Stanford. It's not because Stanford is a great school that Lara Jean has researched or visited. It's only because that's the school that her boyfriend Peter is attending. Apparently, he's already applied and been accepted. We never know why that's his number-one school but it is. Because Lara Jean is in love with him and wants to be him, she applies to Stanford, simply to follow him.
It's like the TV series Felicity (1998). At least here, Lara Jean is in an actual relationship with the boy she's following. Felicity wasn't in a relationship with the boy she was following. Either way, it's perhaps not particularly feminist for a female character to follow some boy somewhere for no reason but to follow him. However, the wrinkle is what she would do if she didn't get accepted into Stanford. Her application to Berkeley seems like it's a contingency plan. It's a hour away from Stanford. Obviously, there are colleges and universities that are even closer to Stanford than Berkeley, but Berkeley is the only top-level school that's close-by, top-level meaning a school with a billion-dollar endowment.
Stanford is in the top three of schools in terms of billion-dollar endowments. Berkeley is good, but it's not even in the top twenty, so it's not sure why she applied there. It probably has a good program for English, which is her major, but I don't think it's perceived as one of the top programs in the country, or at least that case is never made in the film. Proximity would seem to be the key reason. Yet, her third choice is NYU, which isn't about proximity. Based on her love of romantic movies, a majority of which have been made in New York, she seems to have this fascination with NYU, but other than superficial things, there's no argument as to why she wants to go to NYU. Arguably, Columbia University is a better school and it's also in Manhattan. In short, it's just a contrived thing to put Lara Jean in the same position as her sister in the first film as one final test of the so-called love between Lara Jean and Peter.
This film opens with Lara Jean and her family visiting South Korea for spring break. Given that opening and given her mother's death, if Lara Jean was going to insist on going to any city for college or to study, Seoul seemed like it was perfectly set up to be that place. It could have been a place for her to connect more with her heritage, culture and her late mother. There's even a moment where she feels bad about not being able to speak Korean. Yet, New York City becomes her obsession or the so-called city for which she falls in love, but there's nothing about it that she says that couldn't be said about San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago or Boston. Her love of New York, having been in it for a couple of days feels super arbitrary.
Even if it wasn't arbitrary, even if she's in love with the city, that city will be there in four years after she gets her Bachelor's degree. She could even go there for grad school. There is no real examination of her choices or what she's really trying to accomplish or what it means. It's kind of wishy-washy of her, but, as a feminist stance, it's good that Lara Jean as a character isn't chasing after a boy. Here, she's chasing after something else. This time, she's chasing after a city or a romanticized version of that city as viewed through movies or privileged experiences of that city. I do find it odd that no one ever considers the option that Peter could skip Stanford and come to New York himself or that he could transfer. Given that no information is given of why he wants to go to Stanford or what he's even going to study, him going to New York would have seemed like less of a problem.
The solution that is reached feels perfectly reasonable, if not predictable, given the tone and ending of the previous ones. It's Lara Jean having her cake and eating it too. It removes all the dramatic stakes and makes all the fuss feel like much ado about nothing. It's an ending at which I shouldn't be disappointed. It just felt like the whole thing went out with a whimper.
Rated TV-14.
Running Time: 1 hr. and 55 mins.
Available on Netflix.
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