The anticipated final instalment to Netflix’s Kissing Booth franchise has finally arrived and it might be the biggest mess out of them all. If the first and second films took all the worst cliches of rom-coms, and added some gross sexualisation of barely legal teens to keep it interesting. The third film is more of the same, but with more fluff to reach that two hour runtime.
★★✰✰✰
At the end of the last movie, Elle (Joey King) is accepted into both Harvard and Berkeley. This becomes an awful problem for Elle because of Rule Number 19 of “The Best Friend’s RuleBook”: Always go to the same school as your bestie. After a monologue that brings us up to speed on Elle’s life since the last film, we find that her best friend’s parents are selling his childhood beach house. While packing up, they uncover a bucket list they made when they were kids; thus, they set out to fulfil all of them before leaving for college. This includes flash mobs, skydiving, and live-action role-playing Mario Kart. In between all these side plots, the film stretches out far too thin and it often feels like it has no idea what it wants to be.
The plot is less of a coherent story and more of a series of disconnected scenes. Elle endures so many minor struggles in the needlessly long 2 hr runtime that none of the characters has time to breathe and let their dynamics develop. In a rush to pump these movies out every year, the cinematography has some visibly cut corners. Several shots that feature a close up which reveal a clearly used green screen and the editing is static if functional.
Lee (Joel Courtney) is still hopelessly dependent on Elle as if he learnt nothing from the last movie when he repeatedly blew off his girlfriend Rachel (Meganne Young) to go on quasi dates with Elle instead—poor Rachel has every right to tell him to go date Elle and run from this situation. In the latest movie, she seems to have given up and just accepted the situation.
Noah (Jacob Elordi) makes a return, if only by showing up from time to time and grunts angrily when needed. Since the first movie, he’s grown a little bit. He is less controlling and less prone to violent outbursts. He’s understandably angry that Elle invites Marco along to her shenanigans after she cheated on Noah with Marco in the last movie, and Elle somehow paints him as the bad guy.
The film franchise is indicative of Netflix’s wider approach to teen movies. They exist in a bubble of privileged excess, where money is no object, and the only problems you have in films like Tall Girl are fitting into “Size 13 Nikes, MEN’S size 13 Nikes.” It creates a comforting experience with easily solved issues relatable to everyone, but often at the cost of creating inoffensive and bland stories. It’s a pattern in media at the moment to bank on nostalgia, and this is perhaps where the strength of this trilogy lies. We’ve all been self-absorbed teenagers who thought our first loves would last forever. I’m not advocating for the film to resemble Euphoria, but it often feels like it struggles to embrace its vapid premise. This is evident in the third film, where director Vince Marcello chooses to make a kitchen sink drama for rich people.
The final few minutes break away from fantasy into realism, we don’t get the happy ending we expected, instead it takes a risk to give its audience a rushed lesson about love and romance, which leaves me wondering if that was the intent of the film franchise all along.
The Verdict
If you enjoyed the first two films in The Kissing Booth franchise, you’ll definitely enjoy this one, as it is more of the same. In the end, you don’t watch The Kissing Booth franchise for substance, you watch them to reminisce about your own teenage experience, and feel safe in the knowledge that being young and dumb in love is a universal experience.
Words by Hashaam Yaqoob
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