In 2018, one of the “most-watched movies in the country, and maybe in the world,” was released into the Netflix streaming platform. The Kissing Booth starring Joey King and Joel Courtney was a huge success and it was even calculated that 1 in 3 viewers of the movie, rewatched it over again. Despite sparking some controversy over a seemingly misogynistic plotline, most watchers ranted and raved about the film.
In the first movie, Elle Evans and her lifelong best friend, Lee Flynn are navigating their way through a new year of school. Elle has matured a lot over the summer and many other students are noticing, especially, Lee’s older brother, Noah. When Elle and Lee propose a kissing booth as their club’s stand at their school fundraiser, Elle promises to get Noah, the most popular and most attractive guy in school, to participate. He refuses to be a volunteer but shows up to the booth right as Elle is the one being kissed while blindfolded. After they kiss, there is instant chemistry and begin sneaking around behind Lee’s back because they knew he could never accept them together. When Lee finds out about her brother and Elle, he refuses to let her have both leading to Elle dumping Noah to keep her friendship. But Lee knows he can’t and shouldn’t make his best friend choose between love and friendship. At the end of the film, Noah leaves on an airplane to attend college at Harvard.
The trailer for the sequel now has over nine million views and is set to premiere on July 24th. Now as a senior in high school, Elle is juggling planning out her future plans, her long-distance relationship, and also when a new guy is added to the equation, it only makes things more confusing for her. Her best friend Lee’s mom and her mom who passed away when she was little, became best friends when they attended Berkley in California together making it their dream to go together. But with her boyfriend in Massachusetts, he urges her to apply to college in his area. She has numerous difficult decisions to make her senior year and the movie leaves us wondering how Elle will go about them.
As an avid movie lover and Netflix aficionado, I am so incredibly excited for the sequel to premiere and in fact, have been waiting for it to be announced. I love movies that I can relate to and romance mixed with a little comedy is always a genre I am a sucker for. The Kissing Booth is not only a movie I can resonate with due to the pressures of going to college and boys’ troubles but also about the tough decision making that starts to come when you begin to plan your future with college. This is the first Joey King movie I have ever seen but I know she has also received critics praise and also a Primetime Emmy and Golden Globe Award for her performance as Gypsy Rose Blanchard in “The Act,” a true-crime drama series.
