THE KISSING BOOTH 2 Is The Worst Netflix Teen Romcom I've Ever Seen | Cynical Reviews

sponsored by raycon hey you can review hey did you know the kissing booth 2 is out are you going to review it do the kissing booth hey ugh i can't believe it's been over a year and a half since i reviewed the original kissing booth you should go watch my video on that train wreck it's pretty good if i don't say so myself but here's a quick recap for the uninitiated god how i envy you the kissing booth is a netflix original teen rom-com based on a story written on wattpad by a fifteen-year-old which should tell you everything you need to know the story follows elle not ellie as i wrongly assumed in the previous video you can all stop reminding me now and her unfortunate relationship with generic chad noah as she struggles with her feelings for him and her promise to his brother and her best friend lee that she wouldn't date him because that would break one of the stupid friendship rules that he arbitrarily imposed on her it's essentially two men trying to manipulate and control a woman who ends up going along with it for the most part so as well as being cliched and boring the film has a lot of to put it mildly questionable ideas about romance he's getting the car out get the car out despite that glaring issue and the film just being melodramatic and ridiculous in general it was one of the most viewed movies on netflix in 2018 this popularity would lead main actress joey king to argue that the kissing booth movies are critic proof oh and because that's how the business works this level of success will inevitably result in a sequel thus we have the kissing booth 2 my most requested video ever by an enormous margin hey you're going to review the casing both too hey you're going to review the kissing both too hey you're going to review the kissing booth too hey you're going to review the kissing booth too hey you're going to review the kids and move through hey you're going to really kiss me i'm going to be hearing that in my sleep i'm going to be carrying it around in my head until the day i die this is gonna be the new channel meme isn't it i can just feel it but i gotta give the people what they want so let's take a look two hours and ten minutes are you sh me oh you know what if i have to sit through all this garbage for you guys you can sit through an ad for me enjoy your ears will thank you for picking up a pair of everyday e25 wireless earbuds from raycon i use these on a daily basis due to their great sound quality with added bass high levels of noise isolation quick and easy connectivity via bluetooth six hours of play time and their sleek discreet design that fits comfortably within your ears and they stay in better than any wired earbuds i've ever used they've become pretty much essential for when i'm on the go or out and about listening to music or podcasts or watching youtube and not only do they start out at around half the price of other premium wireless earbuds on the market but you can pick up a pair of these bad boys with an extra fifteen percent off by going to buy raycon dot com slash cynical reviews that's buy raycon dot com cynical reviews for fifteen percent off your order check the video description and pinned comment for a link okay now we're even so shocker the kissing booth 2 is bad who would have expected otherwise from the unholy quad factor of shitty movies there's absolutely no justification for the film to be 2 hours and 10 minutes long it felt like more happened in the first film and that was half an hour shorter i guess they thought hey the first film was successful so let's just do more of it the only thing that surprised me about this movie was how much it didn't surprise me it's incredibly slow predictable cliche ridden most of the comedy is poorly executed and it feels like an amalgamation of all the bad aspects of every teen movie i've reviewed all smashed together into a vile concoction of angst and boredom the story ends up not going anywhere and finishing at pretty much the same point as it started with the characters barely growing or learning anything there's a great deal of repetition and redundancy when it comes to the dialogue and it takes characters far longer to say things than it actually should the runtime is further padded out with a bunch of pointless scenes and subplots by far the most egregious being the gay romance arc which is only one level behind the lesbian kiss in the rise of skywalker in terms of how forced in pointless and insulting it is all the other side characters are as paper-thin as you'd expect but this also extends to the main characters who are still barely developed but worse most of them are terrible people especially l it's perfectly fine to have an unsympathetic protagonist as long as they're presented as such but l is meant to be the sympathetic plain jane every girl that we're supposed to root for and the film completely fails to establish her as such words cannot express how much i loathe this character she somehow managed to become even more insufferable than she was in the first movie and her awful behavior and staggering levels of hypocrisy are either barely addressed or indeed rewarded in the end also i think it's pretty funny how apple has a policy of not allowing movie villains to use their products and yet they're all she's ever using the other characters are only slightly better and all their pathetic drama stems from their being shitty people or being too stupid to communicate properly why is this even called the kissing booth 2 it should have been called rich idiot kids 2 richer idioter uh kidzer the only character who deserves any sympathy is lee's long-suffering girlfriend rachel who we still discover nothing about despite her having more screen time in the sequel she's still nothing more than lee's girlfriend and acts like a complete dumbass with no self-respect the most sympathetic acts like a complete dumbass with no self-respect that's the kissing booth too in a nutshell probably the only positive thing i have to say is that the acting is fairly on point in that the cast do successfully portray these characters as i think they were meant to be portrayed but that doesn't change the fact that those characters are less appealing than soggy toast it has other problems in terms of filmmaking like some really bad editing at times and the music choices being quite bizarre and not making much sense in many of the scenes but pretty much all the issues i have with the film derive from its awful script monkeys with typewriters could have put together something better and i've barely scratched the surface of how bad this writing is it was difficult for me to structure my thoughts about this movie because there was just so much to process it's like scraping away at layers of a turd only to come across yet more layers of yet smellier turd really the only way to unpack just how bad it is is to just show you by going through it okay all right all right let's do it let's just let's just do it it's like i'm trying so hard to hold on to this thing and it just feels like it's slipping away i don't know flynn i i don't i don't have to watch it right away i can relax and enjoy some wholesome youtube content first hi people and i'm back cooking again and today oh she seems like a sweet lady and she's making my favorite meal oh my god no no okay what are you doing no that is not how you make spag ball no no no spaghetti bolognese is my favorite meal and i think i'd rather watch it get completely butchered than sit through the kissing booth 2 again ok just think of the ad revenue considering where we left off i'm guessing you might have a few questions nope not at all i'm good so the sequel begins with l letting us know what happened since she got together with noah in the first movie and when he headed off to harvard which he got into because he read a book once yeah that's the world we're in it's a bunch of pointless stuff like her starting a podcast about video games with lee even though the only game we saw her play in the first film was a dance dance revolution knock off then it only gets brought up again once in a flippant comment this is only one of many instances of the film making a mockery of chekhov's gun elves also applied to berkeley which is where her mom and leah noah's mom met and where she and lee have always planned on going remember those stupid friendship rules and how a large part of the first movie was how [ __ ] and smothering they are well all that's forgotten because they're now important again elle is obligated to go to berkeley because of these stupid rules but it's okay because berkeley has a hill to roll down and a mean page that uses formats that haven't been popular since 2011. oh on that note the movie repeatedly tries to be cool and down with the kids but fails miserably and it seems completely divorced from reality like it's taking place in a fantasyland which would explain lots of little things that on their own wouldn't be worthy of note but make a lot more sense when put in the context of a teenager's daydream such as why the uniform policy at the school seems incomprehensible why the senior year has a field day when that's not a thing that happens in high schools and why noah has a fireplace in his dorm room at harvard because that's clearly what harvard's like but anyway the main focus of the story is on elle and noah's long-distance relationship and the toll it takes on the both of them as they struggle to make it work i'm in a long distance relationship myself transcontinental in fact so i definitely sympathize with how difficult this can be it's hard work but when you're with the right person it's worth it [Music] you're welcome unfortunately neither of these people is the right person they're both terrible in their own ways and they've never had any chemistry beyond hot guy and girl so of course they have a lot of issues she says she wants to be mature and give noah his space but interprets this to mean calling him and then immediately hanging up and then ignoring all of his calls and messages real mature it gets to the point where right after she ignores another message he phones the school pretending to be her dad so that he can talk to her like jesus christ just call her home phone maybe and in case you'd forgotten within the last few minutes they take every opportunity to remind you that he is in fact at harvard he makes it very clear that he doesn't want that much space and that she has nothing to worry about everyone at the school especially the omg girls are still so obsessed with their relationship why why do they give a [ __ ] is there really such a drought of gossip at this school but you see everything in this world has to revolve around this girl despite her having done nothing to deserve it overly british girl makes a reappearance and i just want to take a second to acknowledge the only redeeming quality of the first movie this glorious line i'm british you wanker we have t-shirts now go check them out ellen lee proposed that they do a kissing booth again which is swiftly and unanimously approved before they even know who the kisses are because without flynn as a headliner to draw in business the booth may not do so well this year uh that's a good point wait are they still saying that he was the only attractive guy at the school but let's be honest we all know that the ladies are gonna be the main selling point not that kissing booths ever happen outside of a wattpad fantasy because they're so awkward and gross and i can't think of a movie about a kissing booth being more inappropriately timed they haven't got anyone lined up for the booth but the horny idiots on the committee are satisfied with elle's bs answer during a video call noah suggests she applied to colleges in boston so she can be closer to him but her teacher reminds her that she's neither smart nor talented enough to get into harvard and that her personal essay is trash after all you can't just write an essay and get into one of the most prestigious universities in the world right but lee wants her to go to berkeley and because he's still a controlling [ __ ] he'll get pissy if she even thinks about applying to other colleges so she doesn't tell him that she's applying to harvard the next day some random goth girl shows elle a video that someone creepily took of the new hot guy in school marco she of course being a dumbass turns on the intercom so everyone hears her gushing about how much she wants to wear his ballsack as a face mask not only is this joke one we've seen many times before but the setup makes no sense who is this girl and why is she showing elle a video of this guy and why does l tell this total stranger every thought spurting out of her vagina and if you reverse the genders of this situation it would be really [ __ ] weird but here it's funny because men and she has a boyfriend so this is wildly inappropriate but we get to see some epic totally rad stunt work from lee they do the whole he's behind me isn't he joke and then marco who's basically a hispanic noah centeno and looks way too old to be at this school teases her about it so naturally she doesn't apologize and gets defensive her deflecting blame is gonna be a running theme with his deep buttery smooth voice and obligatory musical talents marco acts as the jacob to noah's edward in the battle of two tall attractive men over an uninteresting gremlin in fact he plays pretty much the same role that noah did in the first film minus the abuse but since everyone in school is drooling over him they want him to do the kissing booth he refuses not giving a reason just like noah did in the first film it's for charity don't you believe in charity standing here talking to you you know what i kind of like this guy so elle challenges him to a dance-off which of course she wins albeit barely so he reluctantly agrees to do it noah buys l a ticket to come visit him and then his friends interrupt their video call and then she sees one singular dreaded female and immediately starts worrying and stalking her on social media feeling threatened by someone who actually has good looks and a personality she decides that she needs to dig her claws into noah by getting into harvard but this being harvard it's stupidly expensive and her dad can't afford it so she decides to enter a dance dance revolution knockoff competition with the hope of using the prize money to pay for harvard which is such a stupid plan because even if she wins that money won't even cover one year's worth of tuition and living expenses at harvard and she'll have to split that money with her dance partner or she would if she were a decent person and i think the irs might have something to say about those earnings welcome to the real world kiddo but she ropes lee into joining the dance competition with her and this exacerbates the conflict in the major subplot of the movie how l is a massive third wheel in leigh and rachel's relationship and how the two friends act like selfish oblivious [ __ ] towards rachel l even forces her to sit in the back seat of lee's car like oh my god that does not bode well and the same night l won the dance contest against marco lee stood rachel up for their date so she gives him an ultimatum to tell elle that she needs to back off not gonna lie though their relationship is made much weirder by her looking like she's old enough to be his mum soon after elle flies to boston to see noah see that could have been intentionally funny but they completely wasted the opportunity she meets his friends in a restaurant before our love rival chloe walks in she's british for some reason i suppose because this makes her seem more sophisticated and therefore more of a threat and she looks like she just came from a catwalk why does everyone in this movie look so old and what the [ __ ] is that elle goes for an interview with a harvard admissions counselor who tells her that she needs to be her real self and not just tell them what she thinks they want to hear but she wouldn't give her this advice because she wouldn't give a [ __ ] and would just reject her without a second thought elle finds an earring under noah's bed then invades his privacy by snooping on his conveniently unlocked phone his text conversation with chloe is mildly suspicious but nothing that couldn't be cleared up with about a minute's worth of communication but of course she overreacts refuses to talk to him and storms out and she flies back home all sad i'm definitely not used to seeing around all those college girls you mean the one and only college girl you saw in the entirety of boston she says she trusts him that nothing happened between him and chloe but she's not convinced here's the thing though i can't blame her entirely because both noah and chloe act weirdly inappropriate towards each other considering they're meant to be just thank friends oh hello handsome i'm outside buzz me up i think you're good for me tell me something i don't know chloe later says that she's not the least bit interested in him but this is not how someone who's not romantically interested in someone acts this is the movie clumsily trying to trick us into thinking that there's something going on when in fact there isn't this is not how you do a bait and switch back at school lee hijacks the intercom to confess his love to rachel and beg for her to take him back so would you please text me a smiley face emoji for yes and a poop emoji for now please for that line alone he should die a virgin also why are you airing your relationship problems in front of hundreds of people man like what the [ __ ] but she takes him back what are you doing girl lee promises rachel that he'll tell elle to give them space but of course he doesn't instead he takes a convoluted [ __ ] way out during dance practice he dramatically sprains his ankle it later turns out that he was faking and his acting is very unconvincing but l is dumb enough to believe it marco is a good dancer but they're reluctant to work together so lee tricks them because the seat is cool it's never established exactly why marco wants to do this i guess he's just horny for normie she calls noah who is of course working out and finally tells him about the earrings she found he insists that he has no idea how it got there she's suspicious of him because of his past which is unfair because while he was a player in the first movie it's never established that he's been unfaithful to anyone and it's stunningly hypocritical of her not to trust him when the things she does with marco are equally if not more suspicious they end up spending a lot of time together preparing for the contest eventually going on what's basically a date where they get closer and give each other bedroom eyes the best thing about this scene is how she talks about her suspicions about noah and chloe while at the same time enjoying a quasi-romantic moment with don juan here all without a shred of irony or self-awareness he basically says i'd never do that to you my lady then he pulls his guitar out of his ass and starts playing for her to get those panties extra moist l discovers that lee was faking his injury and even though he did so in order to have an excuse to spend less time with l and more with rachel he doesn't tell her that and being as fickle as a yo-yo he continues to prioritize l over rachel because he's a dick they go to the beach and then this gay character who has no prior relationship with elle except for being her partner in a race that one time confesses his feelings for their classmate but he's nervous about what his macho friends will think you really shouldn't care what the guys think you definitely shouldn't let it stop you from being with someone that you like believe me i know all about that and it sucks oh [ __ ] off you did not just compare your experiences to those of a closeted gay man are you trying to make me hate you but we're not supposed to hate her that's why this subplot exists it has no impact on anything else that happens and could have easily been cut out without any consequences these aren't characters they're props and i can't think of a more insulting use of a gay romance than to prop up a boring main protagonist and trick the audience into thinking she's a good person when actually she's a massive piece of [ __ ] and her you shouldn't care what guys think message is so rich coming from someone who makes all of her life decisions based around what guys think because this is a teen movie of course there's a massive halloween party elle and lee decided to go as the ghostbusters and because they're both selfish [ __ ] they didn't tell rachel they changed their costume idea rachel finally blows up at elle because lee didn't tell her something that she really doesn't need to be told because really you don't need much awareness to realize when you're [ __ ] blocking this hard or clam jamming in this case elle also takes the opportunity to share a slow dance with marco oh this dance is reminding me how slow this movie is how do we still have an hour left oh my god cue another montage to ill-fitting music as she drifts further away from lee and noah and closer to marco she realizes that the earring was in fact chloe's and then she and marco have another slow-motion romantic dance now that i did not need to see they go to the dance dance competition which is absolutely a real thing that happens in 2020 they do their thing and of course sparks fly just like in the last movie and she decides to break the sexual tension this is witnessed by noah in the audience and lee watching at home watch this lise you can actually pinpoint the second when his heart rips in half and now they win the competition because of course they [ __ ] do so she can't catch up to noah and she leaves marco hanging as well but she decides to go to thanksgiving dinner at the flynn's residence anyway before talking to noah this girl must be addicted to cringe i know that you're upset seriously can you just talk to me like i don't know what's going on she told you to your face what the issue was how can you say that with a straight face how are you such a moronic bent lee confronts her but not about her cheating on his brother on live tv in front of thousands of people oh no he's angry because he discovered that she's applying to harvard wow what an [ __ ] and then because we gotta fit just a little bit more cringing noah walks in with chloe cue an awkward family dinner although from what i've been told this is how most thanksgivings dinners go to be fair why are you acting like i'm the one that did something wrong noah you you don't want to go there right now why not i mean what what are we just not gonna we're not gonna talk about this lee admits that he never told elle to give him space and rachel has finally had enough of his being a terrible boyfriend and breaks up with him good for her she deserves so much better but the snarky conversation continues elle pulls out the earring as a gotcha to noah still deflecting away from her own terrible behavior then she storms out and she's meant to be the good person here she patches things up with rachel and chloe tells noah that she crashed in his bed once when he was out of town and the earring must have fallen off then why would she not tell him that earlier like at the thanksgiving dinner that would have been very helpful to your friends you know molly ringwald who's returned for the sequel and honestly looks worse the wear for it tells elle that she needs to listen i mean yeah duh but this enables her to very quickly and conveniently patch things up with noah then at the homecoming game lee gets voted homecoming king because of course he does noah and marco have a battle of the jawlines noah almost punches him but in the most significant character development we've seen in the franchise so far he's gone from being a violent douche to an almost violent douche not gonna lie i was really disappointed just give me something fun anything please and then one hour and 45 minutes in when the movie should already be over the kissing booth finally makes its appearance they trickly and rachel into kissing and i really hope i don't have to tell you how messed up that is but they get back together again why girl what are you doing you were doing so well oh my god am in the cursing birth this is also where the gay couple get together with elle getting the credit i really can't say emphatically enough this movie marco shows up to talk to elle and she confesses that she has feelings for him now i was actually hoping that the movie would do the interesting thing and dare i say it subvert my expectations having elle and noah both realize that they're not right for each other and end up with new people with whom they have far better chemistry but no that would be too realistic and nuance for these writers so she runs off to be with noah leaving marco to be essentially shocked and cucked she runs to the airport where chloe tells her that nothing is going on between her and noah and she suddenly now takes her word for it because what even is character development wait a minute that was some great timing mate at least they didn't have a rushing through the airport scene oh you [ __ ] noah has gone after her and they meet up at the gazebo where they first got together minus the pervy groundskeeper unfortunately they take too many words to say that they've both been idiots but it doesn't matter anyway because we all know where this has been going the worst part though is that she never once apologizes for cheating on him in such a humiliating way but then why would we expect any different at this point she completely rewrites her college admission essay but it only gets her wait listed to berkeley and harvard while lee got into the former okay i can see this happening she doesn't actually get everything handed to her this could actually go in an interesting direction after all you can't just write a mediocre essay and get accepted into heart no joking she actually got into both berkeley and harvard are you [ __ ] kidding me you had a chance just a chance to do something interesting and you grew it why does this keep happening in all of these movies and in this essay she says that she wants to be the qualities of the other characters whom an admissions officer isn't gonna know or give a [ __ ] about and she's still defining herself based on other people so she's not really learned anything and the essential conflict we're left with at the end of the movie is in essence exactly the same as that in the first movie between her feelings for noah and her sense of obligation towards lee so we've just come full circle and ended up going nowhere and all this of course is meant to set up the sequel which has already been filmed in secret and has been slated for a release next year dread doesn't get a sequel and yet this piece of gets two why why are you doing this to me netflix did i [ __ ] your mother in a past life did i run over your dog and piss on its corpse because of course i'm gonna have to review this garbage because that's now my purpose in life thanks for the ad revenue i guess you window licking [ __ ] i think i'm going mad what do you think cthulhu [Applause] yeah yeah i think you're right i should let the darkness consume me honey go it's time for your flattening yes dear thanks for watching folks if you enjoyed the video give it a like and a share and all that good stuff if you want to support the channel i've got brand new merch out to coincide with this video which you can pick up at bonfire.com cynical reviews this design will only be available for a few weeks though so get cracking alternatively you can join these many fine individuals in pledging your support over on my patreon page your contributions go a long way in helping these videos get made and becoming a patron earns you early access to videos and a mention in the credits i stream semi-regularly over on twitch so follow me on there if you're interested in hanging out follow me on my social media and join my public discord server to stay up to date and i'll see you in the next one you

Channel: Cynical Reviews

Views: 971,050

Rating: 4.952322 out of 5

Keywords: Cynical Reviews, Cynical CJ, The Kissing Booth, Kissing Booth, The Kissing Booth 2, Kissing Booth 2, The Kissing Booth Review, The Kissing Booth 2 Review, Kissing Booth Review, Kissing Booth 2 Review, Cynical Reviews Kissing Booth, Cynical Reviews The Kissing Booth, Kising Booth, Kissing Both, Cynical Reviews Kissing Booth 2, Netflix, Kissing Booth Netflix, Netflix Movie, Netflix Teen, Joey King, Review, commentary, parody, satire, critique, criticism, ad, Kissing Booth Movie

Id: 6QOSL0Y_SCU

Length: 30min 8sec (1808 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 12 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Djremster]

Hey. You should review the kissing booth 2.

[u/InquisitorGoldeneye]

Regarding 20:27 it's pronounced don hwahn, not don ju-an. Unless it's a joke or reference I missed, in which case disregard!

Edit: also, you know how in A Clockwork Orange the writer made up a whole language of fake slang for the youths in the story because he knew that if he used real-life young-people slang then his book would become horribly dated very quickly? I'm forcibly reminded of this when writers fill teen films with pop-culture references which look laughably out-of-date even by the time they release in cinemas.

[u/evilmonkey239]

Extremely late comment that no one will probably see but though this movie sucked, I thought it was actually slightly less terrible than the first movie. Though it was just as stupid and tried to juggle too many plot lines at once, it at least didn’t seem to have nearly as many creepy implications.