To All The Boys: Always And Forever
NetflixTo All The Boys: Always and Forever is the third and final film in Netflix’s accursed and beloved To All The Boys I’ve Before trilogy. With the series documenting the high school romance between main characters Lara Jean Covey (Lana Condor) and Peter Kavinsky (Noah Centineo), naturally, the last film follows the couple during their last year of high school.
Peter is slated to attend Stanford University on a lacrosse scholarship, while Lara Jean is waiting to find out if she’s been accepted to the same school. Naturally, with Always and Forever being almost 2 hours long, Lara Jean doesn’t get into Stanford, throwing a wrench in her and Peter’s five-year plan. She settles for nearby Berkeley and plans to transfer to Stanford after her first year. But as the film continues following Lara Jean and Peter’s final year of high school, she soon realises she actually wants to go to NYU and the 3000-mile distance pushes the couple to consider breaking up. Just like in the other To All The Boys films, most of the problems that arise between Peter and Lara Jean stem from Lara Jean being too scared to simply communicate with Peter, and Peter getting mad over minor things. This really should not be happening, especially since they’ve been together for 3 whole movies. There’s not a lot of actual character development between Peter and Lara Jean over the course of the series and they continue to handle their relationship in a pretty immature fashion. Always and Forever even seems to retcon the plots of the previous two movies, as it's difficult to believe Lara Jean will continue to be with Peter if another boy happens to catch her attention while at university.
To All The Boys: Always and Forever is definitely the most realistic out of the three entries of To All The Boys; instead of fake dating and love triangles, the central conflict is choosing between your significant other and post-secondary plans. The struggles that Peter and Lara Jean go through in this movie are deeply relatable for high school couples, however, it is a big shift away from what makes the To All The Boys movies so fun to watch. There are no other boys that affect Lara Jean and Peter’s relationship, instead, the final film is rather generic and practically a carbon-copy of other teen romcoms. In fact, the most anticipated film of 2021, The Kissing Booth 3, shares almost the exact same plot as Always and Forever, as Elle has to decide between going to Berkeley with her best friend Lee, or to Harvard with her boyfriend Noah. Hopefully, Netflix is at the very least teaching prospective university students that one should not choose a university based on a friend or partner. Thousands and thousands of dollars in tuition is not worth a turkey dump breakup. It’s also bizarre that the characters in these movies happen to be so rich that they only consider Ivy League schools when there are so many other options for post-secondary education.
Always and Forever is also filled with other typical plot points found in senior year movies, with some drama surrounding prom and drama surrounding their class trip to New York City. Lana Condor continues to carry this series on her back, she makes Lara Jean Covey into a wonderfully relatable character and it’s a real shame that Noah Centineo has received tons of other roles while Condor hasn’t been in anything notable since. There are plenty of cute moments and the movie ends up being just fine, but in the context of the wider To All The Boys trilogy, Always and Forever is a pretty disappointing final entry.