To All The Boys Always & Forever Review : Love & All That

To All The Boys, Always & Forever(Netflix)

Starring  Lana Condor and Noah Centineo

Directed  by  Michael Fimognari

Rating: **

Hell, if you enjoyed the  first two films  in the To  All The Boys  trilogy then this one is as  desirable  a closure as  you can get .

So to all the boys and girls who are  curious to know how Lara Jean and Peter’s ongoing romance pans  out , here is  a  clue. They are together at the end  of the trilogy .  But we  don’t really know what’s in store for them  in the future, as Lara Jean  will be going to  New York University while Peter goes  to Berkley  which is quite a distance.

A  large part  of the  film is about managing a   long-distance  relationship over  a lengthy period  of time. The tidal dips  and  curves  that make  a love relationship  interesting to the outsiders, in this case  us, are blissfully circumvented. As  things stand  we  sit in our seats half-bemused half-bored by Lara Jean and Peter’s  she-loves-me-he-loves-me-not prattle .

 The  second sequel sorely lacks pace. It takes some fluent jumps  towards something  virile  and then falls back into the limp mode, exhausted by the sheer  mundanenes  of  the goings-on.

Still, I say the ta-ta  segment of the  treacly trilogy  may be of some interest to the  the younger audiences,  though my daughter found the  romance  “silly and  impractical”. However  the  very real chemistry between the two lead players can’t be denied. Also, the fact that the  pair doesn’t  go all the way until the very end, is  a sweet concession to oldworld values. At one point,  Lara Jean  tells Peter that she  can easily take him up to her bedroom.  But her father’s  disappointed face will follow them.

Speaking of Lara Jean’s  Dad(John Corbett), he marries his affable neighbour Trina(Sarayu Blue) and some parts  of  the narrative get into the wedding mood  with clothes, food, colours and  themes  for  the wedding being excitedly discussed.This again, is  relatively a cop-out for the lack of an anchoring drama .

All said and  shown, there is  no real drama  in the  plot, no big revelations, no shocking twists. This last film in the trilogy is  more about cruising lazily down the same  route rather than diverting into an adventurous  lane.

When Lara Jean asks her  bratty kid sister Kitty(Anna Cathcart) how much she would miss  her Didi on a scale of 1 to 10 when she leaves home for university, Kitty says 4.

Lara Jean protests  that  Kitty had  given a far more generous rating to  how  much she  would miss their eldest sister Margot when she  left home.

 “That’s because I  was younger and far less mature then,” Kitty replies.

 Even the diehard fans  of this  series have grown up now  and would find it hard to give this trilogy-ender  more than 4 out of 10.