The Kissing Booth 2 (2020)

(Netflix Streaming, December 2021) It’s bad form to structure a review as a multipoint comparison with another better film, but The Kissing Booth 2 certainly courts it. After all, it is a teen romantic comedy sequel original to Netflix (second in a trilogy), specific characteristics also shared by To All the Boys: P.S. I Still Love You. I approached both films warily — romantic comedies should not have sequels, because follow-ups usually end up undermining the point of the previous films. If filmed romances have an advantage over real ones, it’s that they can choose to stop on a high point. But whereas To all the Boys: P.S. I Still Love You managed to gradually convince me of its reason for existing, The Kissing Booth 2 never made its case. It’s true that the first films of both series were also very different: The Kissing Booth (the first) left a bad taste in many ways, and I wasn’t exactly asking for more about those dull, frequently unlikable characters. Things are really no better this time around, as our lead couple separates for a bicoastal relationship and our heroine finds herself tempted by an alluring new student. Hypocritically enough, she then proceeds to have fits of jealousy when her boyfriend’s new best friend ends up being a girl. But wait, there’s more! Like her smothering her best friend’s new romance by not leaving him alone for an instant. Or figuring out to which school she should apply to. Or winning a videogame dance contest with that alluring new guy. It’s all schematic, and the formula-based approach is not helped in the slightest by not caring about the characters at all. The lead protagonist is annoying, barely conscious of the issues she causes through her own behaviour, and the film pulls no punches by casting her romantic rival as someone significantly more attractive. The Kissing Booth 2 does try to fix some of the first film’s issues (notably, in not being quite so heteronormative) but even those attempts don’t improve much when the foundation is so bland. By the time every single relationship in the film explodes at Thanksgiving dinner, we’re left shrugging and singularly uninvolved in the protagonist’s messes. The film ends, as is de rigueur, with two quick set-ups for a third volume that I don’t really want to see, but probably will out of completion’s sake.