To All the Boys I've Loved Before

By: A. Nogueira

            Based on the novel by Jenny Han, To All the Boys I’ve loved is a romantic comedy whose target audience is teenagers. The film surprisingly exceeded my expectations, in several ways. Firstly, I wasn’t engaged by the trailer, which made the movie seem centered on the love letters. I was expecting a conventional teen fiction film with underdeveloped drama and unrealistic characters, yet the plot and its characters were one of the film’s main qualities. Lara Jean isn’t the typical protagonist that the audience can easily relate to, she has a unconventional friendship with her sister and has only one friend in school, who is extremely different and quite marking. It escapes stereotypes of high scholars, popular people, for example, aren’t necessarily mean.
            There was excellent casting for the protagonist; she is an Asian actress whose interviews show that she was playing a character entirely different from herself, yet she was excellent in her role. Lara Jean’s romance does not initiate with mutual hatred like most conventions, it wasn’t a predictable match and it revealed how they found love through their honesty, trust and friendship. It addresses issues of growing up in the 20th century an approximates us to characters that seem real and even flawed.
            Overall, the film form such as cinematography was often good but unexceptional, with a similar result with the soundtrack, editing, etc. Nonetheless, I believe the director was likely loyal to the book and produced the best movie adaptation it could possibly have.