Kissing Booth 2 (Netflix)
Starring Joey King as Elle Evans,Joel Courtney as Lee Flynn,Jacob Elordi as Noah Flynn,Maisie Richardson-Sellers as Chloe Winthrop,Taylor Zakhar Perez as Marco Valentin Peña
Directed by Vince Marcello
Rating: **
Kissing Booth in 2018, chronicling the transient travails of a bunch of high-heeled low-intellect high school students who have nothing better to do than to discuss dating, mating, berating and waiting, deserved a sequel as much as American Pie did. If Pie could swing it why not Booth? Huh?
I have to admit that Kissing Booth 2 is slightly better than the first film. It’s got a more robust to narrative thrust, and there’s no pretension in the sequel’s borderline-infantile intentions. The two films go hand-in-hand. They target themselves at the young teen-plus audience while the senior characters, the parents, are reduced to mere props.
The focus is entirely on the pretty and not-untalented Ella Evans as Joey whose boyfriend Noah (Jacob Elordi) has left for Harvard. Joey prepares for Harvard amidst endless chatter and partying. We all know what happens in long-distance relationships.
The wafer-slim plot matches the anorexic aspirations of the cast. They all look like they have stepped out of an advertisement for a brand of fat-free tuna fish.
There is something fishy about a sequel that doesn’t allow its characters to move forward emotionally or otherwise keeping them trapped in a neverland of doll’s-house existence. Except that Ibsen would happily exchange his vision for a carton of whiskey were he to see the characters in this film prancing in vacuous ecstasy.
While the girl s show some spark in their brain frame, the guys are all the body-building gym-trim blokes. The music and songs contour their wispy existence, layering a rather flimsy plot with a veneer of brio. But at the end of this 2-hour-plus musical chairs of witless courtship I was left with a feeling of eating too much cake at a birthday party where the guests have all left. The Kissing Booth 2 leaves you a bit sick at the pit of your stomach.
It’s like celebrating Lipstick Day during the Corona crisis.
