“The Kissing Booth 2” Review

One night this summer, my friends and I had exhausted all of our options of things to do which included people watching at Pewaukee beach, getting ice cream and driving around. This is when we found ourselves in my friend’s sunroom flipping through Netflix. We saw that the Kissing Booth 2 was out, so we decided to watch it for the comically cheesy rom-com vibe.

Let me tell you, this movie was an experience. It picked up where the first Kissing Booth left off. Elle and Noah are in a long-distance relationship, with him at Harvard and Elle going into her senior year of high school. People always say high school relationships will fail when they go to college. And theirs should have.

Elle starts the movie by constantly worrying about Noah cheating on her with his new friend, Chloe who, by the way, is gorgeous and I get why Elle is worried. Then, she becomes close to the new boy at her school, Marco, who is very attractive. Naturally, flirting happens between the duo, but Elle tries to suppress their romantic attraction. They decide to be partners for the Dance Dance Revolution competition where *shocker* they kiss in front of Noah, who had decided to surprise Elle.  

Personally, I do not think Elle is a likable character because she does not think of others when making her decisions. In her and Lee’s friendship, (Elle’s best friend and Noah’s brother) he does a lot more for her than she does for him. In the movie, he steps back so she can win the dance competition after she tells him she needs the money to pay for UC Berkeley, a school they had dreamed about going to together. This is a complete lie as she really needs the money to pay for Harvard, where she applied behind his back to be with Noah, who happens to be Lee’s brother. She is also so clingy that she almost ruins Lee’s relationship. We also can not forget that she kissed another guy, twice!!, while she was in a relationship. I do not think Noah should have forgiven her so easily. 

The movie had some very interesting scenes, like the one where Elle is describing how hot Marco is, which gave me second-hand embarrassment to watch. And, there was a subplot of a gay couple getting together, which seemed like Netflix’s attempt at diversity.  

I think Marco and Lee deserve better than Elle using them to help herself and then mostly ignoring their problems. While her friendships and relationships were problematic, the ending was by far the worst part of the movie. It was so sudden, unsatisfying, and left many questions unanswered. It left off with Elle still undecided on where she is going to college and Marco indicating that he has not given up on her yet. It is a good thing they already filmed the third movie because the ending of this one was not it.

I will be watching the third movie because I need to know what happens. I know this cringe worthy movie series will continually give me a good laugh.  

• movie
• Netflix
• romantic comedy