“To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before” Sequel Continues Teen Rom-Com Perfection

In its debut, the book-turned-film To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before was an unexpected hit in its Netflix debut in 2018. Its Vietnamese-American star Lana Candor gave us a different type of cast in Lara Jean and her mixed-race family, and — as I proudly predicted — To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before became a teen romcom instant classic. Now, two years that feel a lifetime ago later, after countless Peter Kavinsky tweets and GIFs professing our love for Noah Centineo’s portrayal of the perfect modern teen boyfriend, To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before: P.S. I Love You comes with the pressure of expectations. Fortunately for audiences, with the pieces it’s working with — from Lara Jean to her little sister Kitty to Peter Kavinsky to her adorkably progressive and thoughtful dad — making a strong sequel in P.S. I Love You seems almost as easy as letting the characters write themselves for an hour and forty-two minutes. Set the stage, let nature take its course, and enjoy the charm.

The stage, in this sense, is a love-triangle plot where we meet one of the other boys to whom Lara Jean sent a letter. Enter John Ambrose (played by Jordan Fisher, notably darker than the original character depiction), a double-named charmer whose biggest challenge is to be written well enough to serve as realistic competition to Peter Kavinsky. The impulse, I imagine, would be to write John Ambrose as a polar opposite of Kavinsky, perhaps sharing a Korean-American experience with Lara Jean and speak…