To All The Boys I've Loved Before - Movie Review & Comparison

I'm not going to faff around with an introduction and I'm going to go straight into my review. Alright, here we go!

When I saw the opening credit of 'AwesomenessTV' I was worried and praying that this movie would be A LOT better than the last awesomenesstv production I saw on Netflix ~ you get me. Unfortunately, I found some of the same gripes that I had in that last movie in this movie. The acting was okay, nothing to praise and at some points, it felt very unnatural, for example, the dad character, he seemed like every other stereotypical kid show dad. However, unlike you get me I actually finished watching this movie. It was much better than expected as time went by.

I was excited to see PLL Mona playing Margot and having read the book I knew she wasn't going to be making many appearances but her presence was noted and appreciated.

Kitty, Lara Jean's baby sister is like 8 in the book but she's 11 in the movie. I understand why they would do this as there are certain things you have to do when working with child actors, like they can only work for a certain amount of time a day, but Kitty's character isn't really in the book too much except to move the story along, so she could've easily been played by an 8-year-old. Another thing about Kitty was that her acting was very expected of a child actor, I'm not going to complain because acting is like wine, it takes time to become refined and worth something. Also, upon a few more viewings Kitty grew on me but I would've loved to see the character as she is in the book.

After having to finish the movie I was wholly impressed, and I must say Lana Condor (Lara Jean) and Noah Centineo (Peter Kavinsky) had such good chemistry and their acting surpassed many of the others in this movie. I feel like they portrayed the characters close to the book and I loved all the quirks they put across in their acting.

Watching the movie I was a little upset that they cut out major bits in the story like Lara Jean and Josh's storyline where they shared a forbidden kiss whilst Margot was away, and Peter finding Lara Jean after her minor accident and offering to stay and help. Or the fact that they did all the Christmas preparations without Margot which added to the tension between sisters. However, I'm glad they kept in the major relationship-y stuff between Peter and Lara Jean, like him stealing her away to a party and the hot tub.

As a stand-alone piece of art the movie was reasonably good but when compared to the book, it is to be expected that it's not as good because the movie glances over details that were plot points in the book. I understand why they had to sort of chop up and rearrange the events in the movie.

Overall, if you want to watch a sorta cringy teen flic, watch away! But do find time to read the book too.

- Terry xx

BONUS

Hi there, here's a little video review I did for the book and movie too.