To All the Boys I've Loved Before (2018)
Directed by Susan Johnson
Lara Jean's love life goes from imaginary to out of control when her secret letters to every boy she's ever fallen for are mysteriously mailed out.
19 connections found
View:
19 films that influenced this film
What critics say influenced To All the Boys I've Loved Before
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.
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 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.)
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.
Advertisement
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?).
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.
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.
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).
Advertisement
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).
But that’s not to say his films, like Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club , were completely without their share of blemishes.