‘To All The Boys: P.S. I Still Love You’ — movie review

To All The Boys: P.S. I Still Love You picks up with Lara Jean and Peter officially dating, but a new suitor is bringing trouble to the honeymoon

To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before felt like a breath of fresh air when it premiered two years ago on Netflix. It came on the heels of a renaissance in romantic comedies that still firmly used the formula we all know and fall for but subverted it in some way. Already by having Lara Jean (Lana Condor), a half-Korean American teen girl, as its lead it felt new. It found its heart in places other than the romance whether it the bond between the three Covey sisters, eldest Margot (Janel Parrish) and youngest Kitty (Anna Cathcart), or remember their late mother. If anything, the romance was secondary to Lara’s own journey. That’s why it was disappointing that the sequel To All the Boys: P.S. I Still Love You felt like a regression into the genre’s cliches. 

Lara Jean and Peter (Noah Centineo) are officially a couple — the hottest at the school to boot. But the girlfriend thing is new to Lara. She doesn’t know the “right” things to do and it doesn’t help that Peter’s ex Genevieve (Emilija Baranac) is always around. So when John Ambrose (Jordan Fisher), one of the recipients of Lara Jean’s love letters, writes back she doesn’t know what to do. Is it wrong that she felt a heart flutter when she read the letter? She’s supposed to love Peter. Still, it’s clear that they’re both heads over heels for each other so she doesn’t think much of the feeling. Of course, this isn’t the last we hear of John Ambrose.

As part of the school’s volunteer program, Lara Jean volunteers at Belleview Retirement Home where eccentric resident Stormy (Holland Taylor), who knew her sister when she volunteered there, shows her the ropes. It’s all looking up until John himself shows up to volunteer causing Lara Jean to quite literally fall for him — she actually slips and falls to the ground. So there’s the set up: on one hand there’s the new, exciting and sweet John Ambrose who seemingly always knows the right things to say and on the other there’s Peter who she went through so much to be with but seems to be failing at the boyfriend game. 

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There are some moments where the movie comes alive like one where Lara Jean, Peter, John Ambrose, Gen, and Lara Jean’s cousin Chris (Madeleine Arthur) go to an old treehouse they used to hang out in as kids to dig up a time capsule they buried. However, much of the movie feels like it’s on an Ambien. P.S. I Still Love You loses so much of the glow the first film had by falling too far into cliches that we’ve seen in so many rom-coms with a love triangle at the center. In particular, making Peter almost too unlikeable versus John Ambrose who is too perfect pulls the tension out of the affair and makes the final act frustrating.

The same goes for the performances. In the first Condor was endearing as a woefully naive high schooler. Here she feels sedated like she’s indifferent rather than torn between the two boys. And for much of the movie Centineo is sidelined depriving us of the effortless charm that catapulted him into stardom. Thankfully, Fisher more than makes up for it with his pitch-perfect and heart-stealing turn as the sweet John Ambrose. Still, P.S. I Still Love You leaves much to be desired. 

Was To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before a fluke? Perhaps. I would have loved to have seen director Susan Johnson’s take on the sequel — Michael Fimognari made his feature directorial debut with this film.