Story by Grant Dillard, Staff writer

Graphic courtesy of Freestockphotos

“To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before” premiered on Netflix on Aug. 17, 2018 and has received unanimous critical praise from audiences. The film currently has a 91 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes and a 7.4 rating on IMDB. But is the film really deserving of all the praise it gets? Or is this a case of giving a film more hype than it deserves?

Lara Jean Covey is a 16-year-old girl in high school who enjoys fantasizing about being in love, though she is actually terrified of the idea of having a real relationship. Throughout her early teenage years, Lara Jean has written letters to boys who she’s had feelings towards, but has never sent them out. Things in her life start to change for both better and worse when the letters end up being sent out to the boys.

For a seemingly unique premise, the film doesn’t exactly go for any unique or unexpected differences. It mainly focuses on Lara Jean and one of her crushes, Peter Kavinsky, going out but Kavinsky only agrees to do so to make his ex-girlfriend jealous. And, of course, they end up falling in love in the process. It’s a basic premise for sure, but the well-written dialogue and the performances from the actors make the film even better than it could have been.

Where the film truly shines is with its main leads. Lana Candor does a terrific job in the lead role; the young actress perfectly captures the feelings of awkwardness and anxiety when it comes to dating, and also has really good comedic timing. Candor already had a bit of a following after her appearance as Jubilee in “X-Men: Apocalypse” back in 2016, but this film is definitely her big break that is bound to get her more projects in the future.

Noah Centineo also impresses as Kavinsky. It could have been easy to cast a typical good-looking actor with little to no personality on-screen but thankfully Centineo is extremely likable, funny and really charming. Not to mention, he and Candor have incredibly believable chemistry. The film’s plot does take the character of Kavinsky in a few directions that are less than inspired, but Centineo is still consistently good all the way through.

Unfortunately, the supporting cast, including Lara Jean’s other love interests, don’t leave as much of an impression. The film does give details as to how she met each of the other boys but they still aren’t interesting as characters. This is strange, given how pivotal to the plot they’re supposed to be.

For the first two acts, the story is actually quite engaging, albeit predictable. In the third act, things start to get more problematic as the film goes through the always dreaded “misunderstanding” cliché. This is the moment where some form of miscommunication happens that results in everyone being upset at each other, and a heavy dose of drama takes place. In this film’s case, not only is a recorded encounter between Lara Jean and Peter taken out of context, but a miscommunication involving Peter and his ex-girlfriend ends up complicating things even further. The third act still has its good moments but the drama really puts a damper on things.

Though not as groundbreaking or brilliant as some people build it up to be, “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before” still works as a decent romance film and a good addition to Netflix’s original film category. It’s an entertaining movie but it may be disappointing for those going in expecting something truly special. Still, it’s at least worth seeing once for curiosity’s sake.