*SPOILER ALERT* This article contains spoilers of To All the Boys: Always and Forever

To All the Boys: Always and Forever is the third movie in the To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before trilogy. This romance movie certainly ties the trilogy together and completes it beautifully by hooking you into the life of a student deciding where to go to college with her boyfriend.

This movie was released on February 12th on Netflix. The trilogy is based on a book series written by Jenny Han.The final movie focuses on drama surrounding which college Lara Jean (Lana Condor) and Peter Kavinsky (Noah Centineo) will choose to attend next year.  Peter and Lara Jean have dreams to go to Stanford together, but when Lara Jean doesn’t get into Stanford, she has to decide which college to go to.

One thing I was quite pleased with about this movie is that it shows almost perfectly how difficult it is to make huge decisions, and how you might have to compromise. When Lara Jean does not get into Stanford, she decides to go to UC Berkeley, because it is only an hour away from Stanford, and she does not want to be away from her boyfriend. However, on a class trip to New York City, she experiences what it is to be in a large city, and falls in love with the city. She decides to go to New York University, even though it is thousands of miles away from Stanford.

The movie certainly shows how hard it is to decide between choosing to go with the person you like or the place you like. I thought that this came across well in the movie and made the movie more realistic and relatable to some people.

Another thing that was satisfactory about this movie is that it is a lot more realistic than other rom-com movies. Most rom-com movies only focus on love and drama, but this movie also shows big decisions like college, mending friendships, and living for yourself. The movie shows how Lara Jean could have gone to UC Berkeley to be with Peter. She might have regretted the choice if she went there, so she chose New York University because it made her happy, not because she wanted to be with Peter.

The movie also shows how she mended her relationship with Genevieve Mitchell (Emilija Baranac) and started getting a lot closer with each other as friends. Gen and Lara Jean used to be friends back in middle school, but when Lara Jean kissed the person Gen liked back then, Peter, they stopped being friends. They started being friends again in the second movie, but them talking about the same college really cemented their relationship as friends. All of these things make the movie more realistic, rather than just focusing on the love and drama between Peter and Lara Jean.

One thing that I did not like about the movie is one of the scenes where Lara Jean is fighting with her older sister Margot (Janel Parrish) and wants to apologize by sending her a text. Lara Jean accidentally sends Peter a text saying “Of course. Love you.” He asked if she got into Stanford before Lara Jean accidentally sent this text, so this leads Peter to believe that she got into Stanford, even though she did not. The text was meant to go to Margot, but Lara Jean accidentally sent it to Peter.  After Lara Jean accidentally texts Peter yes, he shows up at her house with a speaker and his car painted with the word “Stanford” at night to celebrate the fact that she got into Stanford.

Even when Lara Jean tries to tell Peter what happened, he always interrupts until Lara Jean finally gets a chance to tell him. To me, I got a lot of second-hand embarrassment from Lara Jean, since she was in such a difficult situation and she did not want to break his heart. I felt this scene was a bit too much because this scene was not even there in the book. In the book, Lara Jean just tells Peter that she didn’t get into the same college, but in the movie, it is exaggerated and drawn out to the point where it feels uncomfortable.

Overall, this movie is an amazing movie and I would recommend it to anyone that loves romance movies, movies based on a book, or anyone looking to get out of their comfort zone. This movie is a great movie and I am definitely going to watch it again! This movie is quite similar to The Perfect Date, The Sun is Also a Star, and Everything, Everything, so if you are a fan of those movies, you should watch To All the Boys: Always and Forever.

9/10