For those who are debating whether or not to watch the new Netflix adaptation of “To All the Boys Always and Forever,” this article might help sway you one way or the other. 

The first half of this movie is good for people who are tired of romance movies with contrived or unreasonable relationship problems. For the most part, Lara Jean and her boyfriend Peter’s worries that they’ll break up once they leave high school are valid, but it gets cheesier as it goes on. To try and avoid breaking up once they go to college, Lara Jean and Peter plan on going to Stanford together. The movie starts out with the main character Lara Jean vacationing in Seoul, South Korea for spring break. While she is there Lara Jean writes a letter to her boyfriend, Peter, about how much she misses him and how excited she is for college. But everything starts to go wrong after Lara Jean finds out she wasn’t accepted into Stanford. Peter was so excited to see Lara Jean’s results, but when he texts her about it, Lara Jean is too upset to tell him she didn’t get in since he was already going there on a lacrosse scholarship, so she just lies to him. 

At this point in the movie, I thought the massive fight that every romance movie couple has will be over how Lara Jean lied about going to Stanford and everyone keeps mentioning a class trip to New York so I thought it would happen then. But this movie proved me wrong again.  Lara Jean tells Peter about it on their class trip to New York and instead of fighting about it like a typical movie couple, they have a pretty mature conversation about and make a new plan that Lara Jean will go to U.C. Berkley and transfer to Stanford after freshman year. This is why I would recommend this movie to people who aren’t interested in a typical romance movie. Lara Jean and Peter’s relationship is so different from other movie couples, it’s a nice change. However despite their conversation, Lara Jean is still nervous to talk to Peter about anything college-related. And it only gets worse after Lara Jean goes to a party at N.Y.U. and realizes how much she liked it in New York. N.Y.U. was one of her safety schools that she applied to just to humor her older sister but after the party, she doesn’t even want to go to U.C. Berkeley anymore. 

After the trip to New York, Lara Jean’s decision doesn’t get any easier. She knows Peter will be upset if she goes to school all the way across the country, but she fell in love with N.Y.U. and she wants to make sure she makes the right decision. I thought Lara Jean and Peter would get in a fight about N.Y.U., but again they acted reasonable about it, although it’s clear that Peter was upset that Lara Jean decided to go to school 3,000 miles away from him. This isn’t really fair to Lara Jean because it seems like he wants to hold her back from her dreams just to keep her near him. Overall this movie is alright, it is good for people who aren’t fans of a lot of cheesy romance, it gets a little cliché at times but nothing too unbearable. It stands out next to other romance movies that Netflix has to offer, but it’s nothing revolutionary.