Susan Johnson
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Filmography
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Sixteen Candles (1984)
Directed by John Hughes
influenced To All the Boys I've Loved Before (2018)
Themes Characters Plot
This helps contribute to the film's overall sense of innocence, which in turn calls back to the inherent sweetness of classic '80s teen films like Say Anything... or Sixteen Candles .
Even more impressive is the feat achieved of keeping the goody-two-shoes heroine sympathetic throughout without making her drop her moral standards, unlike, say, the heroines in Clueless or Mean Girls , two obvious touchstones here along with John Hughes movies such as the namechecked Sixteen Candles .
For instance, the fake couple trades must-see favorite movies, Sixteen Candles for Fight Club, as they shake on their contractual agreement.
Based on Jenny Han’s beloved YA novel by the same name, the movie centers on the life of Lara Jean Covey ( X-Men: Apocalypse ‘s Lana Condor), a shy high school student who’d rather watch Sixteen Candles on a Friday night than try to find her Jake Ryan in real life.
Lara Jean’s devotion to Sixteen Candles (despite the flat-our racist Long-Duk Dong that she rightly calls out) puts the viewer fully into a John Hughes frame of mind, which is a good place to be, because we haven’t had a consistent string of John Hughes movies in quite a while.
Conceived as a kind of “Sixteen Candles” for the Snapchat generation, this endearing Netflix Original offers an honest, unsentimental take on the mating lives of hormone-addled high school students, earning extra points for casting Asian American actress Lana Condor in what would have been the Molly Ringwald role.
10 Things I Hate About You (1999)
Directed by Gil Junger
influenced To All the Boys I've Loved Before (2018)
Themes Characters
Movies like She's All That , 10 Things I Hate About You , and Can't Hardly Wait were so ubiquitous that a parody of the genre titled Not Another Teen Movie starring Chris Evans was actually released in 2001.
There are fleeting moments that recall Me & Earl and The Dying Girl , 10 Things I Hate About You , even Scott Pilgrim vs The World without the quirky video game aesthetic and the scorned Asian girlfriend.
In what may well be a nod to Larry Miller’s Walter Stratford in 10 Things I Hate About You —both the 1999 movie and the 2009-2010 television series—Corbett’s Dan Covey is a gynecologist, which is mined for humor here in ways both similar to and different from 10 Things.
The Half of It (2020)
Directed by Alice Wu
influenced by To All the Boys I've Loved Before (2018)
Characters Themes Plot
Though it may be compared to Sierra Burgess is a Loser for adapting the same story or To All the Boys I've Loved Before for having an Asian-American lead, The Half of It sets itself apart as a uniquely touching story of young love and self-realization.
Taken alongside Always Be My Maybe and To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before, The Half of It is another data point in favor of Netflix bankrolling quirky Asian-American romantic comedies.
As Netflix did so successfully with their smash-hit teen flick To All the Boys I've Loved Before (and its recent sequel), The Half of It mixes things up by casting an Asian-American actress in the lead – in this case, the quietly charismatic Leah Lewis – but takes things further by making its protagonist gay.
With its plucky teen protagonist and engaging storytelling, “The Half of It” is sure to hit big with Netflix viewers who made 2018’s “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before” one of the platform’s most popular original films (and spawned a franchise in the process).
Focusing largely on Chinese-American teen Ellie (Leah Lewis), who is enlisted by jock Paul (Daniel Diemer) to pen a love letter to his crush, Aster (Alexxis Lemire), at first blush The Half of It seems as though it’s heading for To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before territory.
Pretty in Pink (1986)
Directed by Howard Deutch
influenced To All the Boys I've Loved Before (2018)
Themes
“The male lead was a drip, but it doesn’t matter!” is a line I feel like I’ve subconsciously been telling myself since Pretty in Pink, or really any number of Brat Pack–era classics that our young romance-obsessed heroine Lara Jean (Lana Condor) would probably know by heart.
(We don’t need you to repeatedly have characters reference Pretty in Pink to see its influence.)
Can't Buy Me Love (1987)
Directed by Steve Rash
influenced To All the Boys I've Loved Before (2018)
Plot
The sham arrangement will, of course, be familiar to anyone who’s seen 1987’s far raunchier Can’t Buy Me Love .
No, sorry, that’s Patrick Dempsey in “Can’t Buy Me Love,” but you get the idea.
The Idea of You (2024)
Directed by Michael Showalter
influenced by To All the Boys I've Loved Before (2018)
Themes
The Idea of You may, at first, appear like the run-of-the-mill streaming romance movie—guess again. The film does possess some of those cheesy, simple qualities, like a gonzo premise and a handful of hokey dialogue. But this isn’t a copy-paste, low-budget romantic comedy; this stand-out is the most pleasant surprise since 2018’s To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before.
Not Another Teen Movie (2001)
Directed by Joel Gallen
influenced To All the Boys I've Loved Before (2018)
Plot
Movies like She's All That , 10 Things I Hate About You , and Can't Hardly Wait were so ubiquitous that a parody of the genre titled Not Another Teen Movie starring Chris Evans was actually released in 2001.
Produced by Awesomeness Films and Overbrook Entertainment, To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before stars Lara Jean (played by breakout star actress Lana Condor) as our head-in-the-clouds teen girl protagonist of Junior year, and at first blush this film feels like any – or every – teen movie with the invisible girl who became beautiful after removing her ponytail, glasses, and paint-covered overalls (remember Not Another Teen Movie , anyone?).
Sex and the City (2008)
Directed by Michael Patrick King
influenced To All the Boys I've Loved Before (2018)
John Corbett as the father is idyllic, channeling the wholesome sexiness and sincerity of his character in “Sex and the City.”
The addition of Sex and the City ‘s John Corbett as Lara Jean’s widowed dad whose heart is always in the right place doesn’t hurt either.
There’s also something about seeing Aidan from Sex and the City being an OB-GYN and a father of three that is incredibly, ridiculously distracting.
13 Going on 30 (2004)
Directed by Gary Winick
influenced To All the Boys I've Loved Before (2018)
Dialogue
Noah Centineo, sounding remarkably like a blushing Mark Ruffalo in 13 Going on 30, is the ideal romantic foil for Condor, and had me rooting for him over Josh the moment he showed up and started calling Lara Jean by her last name.
Make it a DIY double feature with Ruffalo’s 13 Going on 30 or Just Like Heaven.
Mean Girls (2004)
Directed by Mark Waters
influenced To All the Boys I've Loved Before (2018)
Characters
Even more impressive is the feat achieved of keeping the goody-two-shoes heroine sympathetic throughout without making her drop her moral standards, unlike, say, the heroines in Clueless or Mean Girls , two obvious touchstones here along with John Hughes movies such as the namechecked Sixteen Candles .
Based on a 2014 Mean Girls -adjacent novel by Jenny Han, To All the Boys… stars Lana Condor (Jubilee from X-Men: Apocalypse ) as Lara Jean – a hip, Asian-American high school wallflower who has a crush on her older sister’s boyfriend ( Happy Death Day ’s Israel Broussard).
There’s a lot on the line, and Heder strings it all together in a mainstream package that recalls everything from Ordinary People to Save the Last Dance and To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before .
It’s a far more dimensional performance than you’ll see in something like Love, Simon (Greg Berlanti, 2018) or To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before (Susan Johnson, 2018), and Heder’s direction and writing is dedicated to really emphasizing the nuances of ASL for an unfamiliar audience.
She's All That (1999)
Directed by Robert Iscove
influenced To All the Boys I've Loved Before (2018)
Themes
However, in comparison to teen films such as She’s All That, A Walk to Remember and American Pie , To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before isn’t oversentimental or incredibly fixated on sex or general nakedness.
Movies like She's All That , 10 Things I Hate About You , and Can't Hardly Wait were so ubiquitous that a parody of the genre titled Not Another Teen Movie starring Chris Evans was actually released in 2001.
Ultimately, the fluency with which Johnson, Han, and screenwriter Sofia Alvarez speak “teen rom-com” allows them to take the fizzy conventions of the John Hughes films that Lara Jean loves, mix them all up with the 10 Things I Hate About Yous and the Cluelesses and the She’s All Thats that the outfits and soundtrack and PNW setting invoke, and send all their best bits and pieces through a machine that modernizes those elements even as it sweetens them to pure confection (yes, even the conflicts).
The Breakfast Club (1985)
Directed by John Hughes
influenced To All the Boys I've Loved Before (2018)
But that’s not to say his films, like Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club , were completely without their share of blemishes.
While Crazy Rich Asians is the first major film to feature an all-Asian cast since The Joy Luck Club , which came out 25 years ago, To All the Boys is the first mainstream teen romance to have a young Asian-American actress as its lead.
“Crazy Rich Asians” is the first film in 25 years to star an all Asian American cast since “The Joy Luck Club”, and “To All the Boys” is the first mainstream teen romance to have an Asian American actress as its lead.
Make it a DIY double feature with Ruffalo’s 13 Going on 30 or Just Like Heaven.
Can't Hardly Wait (1998)
Directed by Harry Elfont
influenced To All the Boys I've Loved Before (2018)
Movies like She's All That , 10 Things I Hate About You , and Can't Hardly Wait were so ubiquitous that a parody of the genre titled Not Another Teen Movie starring Chris Evans was actually released in 2001.
Leave It to Beaver (1997)
Directed by Andy Cadiff
influenced To All the Boys I've Loved Before (2018)
Themes
We all need a little bit of “Leave It to Beaver” and “The Brady Bunch” in our lives.
For instance, the fake couple trades must-see favorite movies, Sixteen Candles for Fight Club, as they shake on their contractual agreement.
She has to watch Fight Club with him, as there’s “no snitching” in “Fight Club” either.
We see them debating pop culture (she likes Sixteen Candles , he likes Fight Club , for my money they are both wrong), and teaching each other about snack foods.
American Pie (1999)
Directed by Paul Weitz
influenced To All the Boys I've Loved Before (2018)
Themes
However, in comparison to teen films such as She’s All That, A Walk to Remember and American Pie , To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before isn’t oversentimental or incredibly fixated on sex or general nakedness.
The Mauritanian (2021)
Directed by Kevin Macdonald
influenced by To All the Boys I've Loved Before (2018)
In "To All the Boys: Always and Forever," the conclusion of the trilogy of hit YA adaptations that began with "To All the Boys I've Loved Before" (2018) and continued with "P.S.I Still Love You" (2020), heroine Lara Jean (Lana Condor) seems to have everything going her way during her senior year of high school--her dad (John Corbett) is getting remarried, her relationship with boyfriend Peter (Noah Centineo) is going strong and the two lovebirds are planning to go to school together at Stanford in the fall.