Kissing Booth 2, Better Than KB2 But Still Awful

Kissing Booth 2(Netflix)

Starring Joey King as Elle Evans,Joel Courtney as Lee Flynn,Jacob Elordi as Noah Flynn,Maisie Richardson-Sellers as Chloe Winthrop,Taylor Zakhar Perez as Marco Valentin Peña

Directed  by  Vince Marcello

Rating: **

 Kissing Booth  in 2018, chronicling the transient  travails  of  a bunch  of high-heeled low-intellect  highschool  students  who have  nothing  better  to do than to discuss dating, mating , berating and  waiting, deserved a sequel as much as American Pie did

If Pie could swing it  why not Booth?  Huh?

I have to  admit that Kissing Booth 2 is  slightly  better than the  first film.It’s got a more  robust to  narrative thrust, and there’s no pretension  in   the sequel’s borderline-infantile intentions. The two films go hand-in-hand.  They target themselves at  the  young teen-plus  audience  while  the  senior characters, the parents, are reduced to mere props.

 The focus  is  entirely on  the  pretty and not-untalented  Ella Evans as  Joey whose  boyfriend Noah(Jacob Elordi) has  left for Harvard. Joey prepares  for  Harvard  amidst  endless  chatter  and  partying.We  all know what happens in long-distance relationships. 

The  wafer-slim plot matches the anorexic aspirations of  the cast. They  all look like they have stepped out  of  an advertisement  for  a brand  of  fat-free tuna fish.

 There is something  fishy about a sequel that  doesn’t allow its  characters  to move forward emotionally or otherwise keeping them trapped in a  neverland  of doll’s-house  existence. Except that Ibsen  would  happily exchange his  vision for  a  carton  of whiskey were he to see the characters  in this film prancing in vacuous ecstasy.

 While the girl s show some spark in their  brain frame, the  guys are all  the  body-building gym-trim blokes .The  music and songs  contour their  wispy existence  , layering a  rather flimsy  plot with a  veneer  of brio . But   at  the end of this 2-hour-plus musical chairs  of witless courtship I  was  left with  a feeling of eating too much cake at a birthday party where the  guests have all left. The  Kissing  Booth 2 leaves  you a bit sick at  the pit of your stomach.

It’s like celebrating Lipstick Day during the corona crisis.