Netflix’s To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before: reviews, news, and analysis of the charming romantic comedy

As the closing credits scroll on To All the Boys: Always and Forever, the third and final volume in Netflix’s sweet teen love trilogy, clips from all three films play in the background. And as they played, I found myself desperately trying to work out what it was that made the first entry in the trilogy — 2018’s To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, directed by Susan Johnson — so much more compelling than the other two. Even in soundless 10-second clips, it was so much better than its successors that it hurt a little.

Maybe it’s the weight of the hype. When the first To All the Boys movie came out in 2018, it was an unexpected success, a dark horse that became one of the most-watched and re-watched original movies on Netflix and single-handedly made teen icons out of both Lana Condor and Noah Centineo. It could afford to be low-stakes and surprising because few critics were expecting much from it. But the next two movies had high expectations to live up to.

There was something about To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, Netflix’s surprise hit 2018 teen love story directed by Susan Johnson, that made people want to wrap themselves up in it.

Everywhere I went in the months after it came out, people were talking about it: at parties with friends, at networking coffees with book publicists, with the Vox politics writers who were popping into the culture team’s Slack channel to declare To All the Boys the only thing that mattered in the world anymore. Usually, the people I talked to made sure to tell me how many times they’d watched it, which makes sense, because To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before has become one of Netflix’s most watched and rewatched movies.

There was a wall of Post-Its at this year’s BookCon, the fan convention for readers. On that wall, publishers were asking readers to share the titles of books that have changed their lives. And one reader felt so strongly about their title of choice that they used seven Post-Its to write its title in firm, emphatic capital letters: TO ALL THE BOYS I’VE LOVED BEFORE.

To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before is the kind of book that people feel that strongly about. Since it came out in 2014, the YA novel and its two sequels — 2015’s P.S. I Still Love You and 2017’s Always and Forever, Lara Jean — have become massive best-sellers. And when To All the Boys was adapted into a movie that launched on Netflix last summer, it swiftly became a bona fide cultural phenomenon. It was one of Netflix’s most-watched and rewatched movies. It spawned multiple think pieces about its “radical softness.” It became ubiquitous.

A sequel to Netflix’s breakaway hit To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before is officially happening, and it represents a major new path forward for the film industry.

Netflix confirmed the sequel on December 19, releasing a short video in which To All the Boys stars Lana Condor and Noah Centineo cutely discuss watching Netflix’s The Christmas Prince and its sequel (synergy!) before announcing that they’re working on a sequel of their own. The video also further teases the arrival of John Ambrose McLaren, a character from the books the To All the Boys franchise is based on who shows up in the post-credits tag of the first movie.

This summer, Netflix invested in resurrecting the mid-budget romantic comedy, acquiring movies like Set It Up and To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before for what the streaming service branded as its “Summer of Love.” And now, it’s looking like the gamble paid off: Variety reports that more than 80 million subscribers watched one of the 11 rom-coms on the Summer of Love slate, according to Netflix’s quarterly earnings report.

There was a time when romantic comedies were so ubiquitous as to be boring, and nowhere near the need of resurrection from an industry disruptor. Every summer, movie theaters were filled with cheerfully formulaic movies about beautiful people falling in love and having wacky hijinks, and at least one or two of those movies was reliably pretty good and could sometimes launch a star.

Bad boys are over. Man-children are over. Lovable losers are over. The women of America are too busy being re-traumatized by the discourse of #MeToo over and over again to want to fantasize about doing the enormous emotional labor required to heal troubled men of their wounds and shape them from tortured frogs into perfect Prince Charmings.

No, instead, American pop culture has officially entered into the era of the wholesome bae. Which is to say that this is Noah Centineo’s universe now, and the rest of us are just living in it.

To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, Netflix’s surprise hit teen romance, is an unabashedly trope-based movie. It’s not trying to recreate the wheel, to deconstruct old formulas or blow up our expectations. Instead, it executes an old trope, simply and with no frills, and it does so really, really well. That’s what makes the movie great.

The trope at the center of To All the Boys is fake dating. It’s one of the most well-worn romantic conceits out there, in which circumstances conspire to lead two people to pretend to be in a relationship together, only to inevitably fall in love during the course of their subterfuge. In this case, the pair in question are 16-year-olds Lara Jean and Peter Kavinsky, and they are fake dating each other so that Lara Jean can get over a crush and Peter can get back at his ex.

To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, the deeply sweet Netflix rom-com that has conquered hearts across the internet since its premiere, is a beautiful throwback to the 1990s. It speaks to a time when the characters of teen movies were constantly faking relationships for a bet or a dare or revenge, only to end up falling in love for real, and to a time when the teen movie and the romantic comedy were solid bets at the box office.

And the first way To All the Boys signals what kind of throwback movie you’re about to watch is through its costumes. The film’s wardrobe is pure ’90s revival. Our heroine Lara Jean runs across her high school campus in Clueless-style plaid skirts and platform combat boots; the mean girl slinks into a party in a slip dress and choker like she’s walking right off the set of Jawbreakers. The clothes are nonstop Looks, and they’re also fundamental to the film’s world building and character development.

To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, Netflix’s new teen romantic comedy, is enchanting. It is what the kids call wholesome, pure, and Soft. I watched it on a Friday night and fell asleep with a smile on my face. Then I woke up on Saturday morning and decided to watch it again.

To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before is that kind of movie: the kind that is as sweet and addictive as candy, that wants its audience to indulge in multiple repeat viewings. And, because it’s on Netflix, you can — which means that, judging from the state of Twitter and Tumblr right now, To All the Boys is already well on its way toward developing a cult fanbase.