You know, I tend to focus a lot on like teen dramas or like older established TV shows or whatever. But once in a while, something comes along that just speaks to me, a TV show or a movie that's just begging for me to watch it. Now recently, Netflix came out with a movie that is everything I've ever been looking for on this channel. Cheesy teen romance? Check. Cringy slang phrases they're trying to desperately make mainstream? Check. Things that are only romantic in movies but would actually be totally creepy in real life?
You betcha! And that movie is of course, "The Kissing Booth" So let's take a walk. The movie starts off with Elle, the main character, giving us a quick summary of her childhood. Which basically just amounts to 'Oh I'm so quirky, guys, just like you!' [Elle] "The first Christmas I remember I was six. I got a Barbie dance party, Lee got a scooter, broke my leg riding Lee's scooter, got in a fight with Lee over who was the best dancer, made up by getting him ice cream, discovered that I wasn't gonna be a fashion icon, discovered I am good at sports, I got my period, FINALLY, went as a pirate for Halloween" Then we get introduced to the two other most important characters in the movie, Lee and Noah Flynn. ♬♬♬ [Elle] "I know what you're thinking. Noah Flynn is stupid hot. but Lee and I developed a list of friendship rules. Lee was responsible for rule number nine which specifically states, 'Relatives of your best friend are totally off limits'" Well, can you tell that to your Aunt Margaret? She keeps winking at me reminding me that she's on menopause for some reason. Anyway, it's the first day of school and Elle rips her school uniform pants. The only thing she has left, of course, is the smallest skirt I've ever seen. So she has no choice but to put on the skirt and things go about as well as you'd expect "Everybody's looking at us... Allow me revise, everyone is looking at you!" "What? No, they're not!" [Elle] "It was true. This was the moment that happens to all of us." Yeah, boy, let me tell you. Same thing happened to me when Taco Tuesday came around and I trusted a fart one too many times. Anyway, some dude comes up and touches her butt. Now, to defend her, Lee almost gets beaten up, which you know It's not that bad on its own, but the dude has A MAN BUN. I'm telling you right now, if you get beaten up by a guy with a MAN BUN? You should probably change schools. After this, at lunch, we meet this movies version of the plastics from "Mean Girls" ♬♬♬ "'Oh my god! How crazy was that fight?" "Flynn was so savage!" [Elle] "These three super popular juniors are kind of a package deal, I call them the 'OMG Girls.'" Olivia, Mia, and Gwyneth. The OMG girls who only eat bananas and drink water which I guess is supposed to be some kind of commentary on girls who starve themselves to stay skinny or whatever, but when you get to my age, bananas and water for lunch is considered a smart, healthy choice. So, yeah, being 30 is awesome! Oh boy! Can't wait to fall asleep at 9:30 tonight! So because of the fight, everyone gets detention and later in detention, man bun guy apologizes and asks Elle out. But when the date comes he stands her up. A little bit later though, he shows up and we learn a very big secret. "Flynn told me that it wouldn't be smart if I showed up for our date tonight." "Noah...?" "You can't tell him I told you." "Why do you care?" "No boobs are worth a broken nose." Hmmm... Now the whole main thing of this movie is they need to come up with a fundraising scheme for their dance club thing at school. So they end up deciding to do a kissing booth-- bet you didn't see that one coming, huh? But like okay...the whole idea of a kissing booth is kind of messed up. Like in a fantasy Netflix world where everyone is fit and attractive and they've all brushed their teeth or chewed gum or whatever like yeah, sure, I can see the appeal. But like really though? Look around your high school or go back and look at your yearbooks or whatever like, would you actually want to kiss any of these people?! Like at best there's maybe like what, 2? Especially at a carnival where everyone's eating like turkey legs and fried butter?! And then they're just gonna come up to you and be like *evil demonic smelly breath sounds*. Anyway, so at the carnival, Elle and Lee set up their kissing booth and things go shockingly well. ♬♬♬ And this is exactly what I was just talking about. Everyone here is attractive, well-groomed, they looked like they've showered (which at least in my high school, was NOT a guarantee) In real life, this would be the grossest thing! Eventually, Lee goes up there to take part in all of the kissin' "I guess I'm next" "I hope you like what you see." I don't know why but this line just cracks me up. ~I hope you like what you see~ Anyway, one of the girls doing the kissing doesn't want to kiss this guy. So they tried to trick Elle into doing it for them. But guess what happens? Noah gets in line and ends up kissing Elle instead?! Whaaa? No way... ♬♬♬ (Cheering) "'C'mon, relax Elle it was just a kiss." "Was it just a kiss?'" Are you kidding me? You were flying through the air, lights were exploding! I think at one point the ghost of Prince came out. It was just like "Mm-hmm." Of course, it wasn't just a kiss! Now, one thing Elle and Lee have is this long list of rules they made up for their friendship when they were like six and they still follow because, you know, that's totally normal. So as per the rules, Elle tells Lee that she kissed Noah. "Oh and get this, I even wound up kissing your brother!" "What? Just don't end up grinding coochies with my brother or I'll literally never talk to you again" Well, I'm never gonna talk to you again anyway, because you just said "grinding coochies" Like what the heck does that even mean?! Now with the whole kissing thing and Lee and all that Elle takes a ride with Noah to some romantic spot to talk about whether they will or won't take things to the next level and then they do the old DEVILS TANGO in front of the Hollywood sign?! Like, okay If you go within five miles in that thing the police come and arrest you for trespassing. At any time of the day there's like 50 tourists there taking pictures anyway, so like if there was one place where you would have the least privacy, IT'S THE HOLLYWOOD SIGN. The movie then shows us this obnoxiously long montage of Noah and Elle trying to hide their relationship from Lee or whatever, but this movie is 50% montages. I swear if you took all of them out, this would be a half hour special. But whatever, anyway, one day Elle hurts herself in the garage and Noah helps her out when suddenly "What the (fire truck)" "Lee, I can explain" O-M-G. As you might expect, Lee's just a little bit upset about the whole Elle and Noah thing. But like whatever no big deal, right? "You know, my whole life, Noah has gotten everything that he has ever wanted. The only thing that I had, that he didn't..." Was this picture of a cool dog with sunglasses? This doesn't really have anything to do with what we're talking about right now I just thought I'd tell you. So Lee's all grumpy grump for a while and then one day goes to the Santa Monica arcade where he and Elle used to like hang out or whatever. Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a second! He's doing BOTH dance pads at the SAME time? ppsshhhh, forget Noah! All he's got is like what? Some kind of dumb motorcycle? Ha. Not even close Elle. What's wrong with you picking Noah over Lee like that? How can you turn down a Dance Dance Revolution champion? So anyway, Lee and Elle become friends again and she decides to go with him and his new girlfriend to prom which honestly sounds like the most awkward thing ever but I mean, hey, what do I know? I never even went to prom! at the prom, for whatever reason, they set up the kissing booth again and Elle gets all emotional about it. [Elle] "It was at this exact moment, that I finally felt okay. I wasn't thinking about Noah or Lee, or anybody. I was a small part of something that mattered. The kissing booth meant something to people." Hmm. I think you might be giving yourself a little too much credit on that one Elle. All it meant was that fifty kids went home with herpes that day. Anyway, then Noah shows up and gives the climactic speech that all these movies have for some reason "Standing here, in front of everyone, I'm telling you--" It says Laurel, you said it was Yanny I listen to it a thousand times it never says Yanny, Elle, how could you lie to me? But Elle doesn't return his feelings and she runs off leaving him looking like a loser. So fast-forward and Noah is about to go off to Harvard. (Yeah, that apparently happened somehow) and Elle gosh darnit just can't live another second without Noah in her life. Yeah, she just kind of pulls this like crazy 180 for some reason. Now at her and Lee's birthday party, they were born on the same day, which is why they're friends or whatever like it's not important just don't worry about it. Elle decides to finally tell Noah how she feels, Lee goes off to find him but actually it's all a setup to trick Elle into thinking she's driving with Lee, but actually it's Noah! I guess it's supposed to be like romantic or whatever, but it's actually just kind of weird if you think about it, but like, whatever. "I decided I had to see you one last time before I went...and then Lee came upstairs and he told me everything." "Yeah" "He said something about rule number 18, or whatever" [Elle] "Rule number 18... 'Always be happy for your besties successes'" Which is a heck of a lot better than rule number 19. "He who smelt it dealt it" but no one ever counts that far. "You know, I want to know what it was that you had to tell me" "Sitting here in front of no one in particular I'm saying I love you." And it's 'Yanny' you barbarian savage and why are you bringing this up now? That was like three months ago. Then the scene ends with the groundskeeper slash security guard guy giving us the creepiest smile I've ever seen. *smile intensifies* Yee. We close out with a little monologue from Elle. [Elle] "Everything suddenly seemed... possible. But it's funny when I think about it cause all this happened just because of a kissing booth." Uhhh, not to be that guy or anything, but this all happened because of the OMG Girls. Who by the way just kind of disappear halfway through the movie for some reason? Like what's that all about about? Whatever--you're welcome Elle. You know ever since Mean Girls came out way back when every so often someone tries to make like the next Mean Girls. But I mean "Mean Girls 2" was a disaster, "The DUFF" was pretty good but like I don't know it just didn't have the same little extra something or whatever that Mean Girls did. The Kissing Booth is actually pretty enjoyable for what it is, I guess, but you can tell someone really wanted to make the next Mean Girls. And while that's fine, I guess, it just never really gets up there. Like they have the characters say these bizarre phrases that I guess they were hoping would become the new teen lexicon or whatever but like, "lady bump"? "That skirt is ridiculous." "My pants ripped, it's all I had" "What about your backups?" "Dry cleaners" "What about your backup-backups?" "These are my backup backups!" "All right, don't get so upset." "I am upset, dude touched my lady bump" Da heck? And yes, I know it's from a song which by the way came out when I was in high school But like my question is who would ever talk like that?! But still, it's alright for what it is I guess. Hey, guess what? This video is sponsored by Squarespace. I'm sure you've all heard about Squarespace by now, but in case you haven't Squarespace is a website that lets you build a website. It has all the tools and features and everything you need to make any kind of website you want. It's all right there, you do it all from their website so you don't need to install anything, patch anything, its like really--it's all just right there. And no joke, it's super easy to start building a professional-looking website Like I never used Squarespace before and I built this whole website here in just like 10 minutes. Right now, Squarespace is offering you guys 10% off your first purchase, if you go to squarespace.com/alexmeyers. For those of you listening in the background or while doing homework (I see you out there) that's squarespace.com/a-l-e-x-m-e-y-e-r-s. With Squarespace, I made this little website where I blog about things that probably would have been video essays once upon a time But you know things are a little bit different now. I've added some stuff to the blog since the last time I talked to you guys about Squarespace. So if you're interested in reading whatever my brain regurgitated out recently, feel free to check it out! if you're thinking that you want to make your own website, Squarespace is offering you guys 10% off your first purchase and a 14-day free trial if you go to squarespace.com/alexmeyers. The link is in the description below. So if you want to start building your own website for like your blog or your online store, your band, your mixtape, or I don't know your Riverdale fanfic--whatever, do it with Squarespace! Hey everybody. Thank you so much for watching. So back with another movie you don't think about doing these movies is like They take about twice as long to make as the regular videos and they end up being about not twice as long but I guess like a 50% longer. You know from an animation standpoint, adding an extra three, four, five minutes to a video is like a lot. Like there's a lot of commitment there to do in the same amount of time as a regular video So, you know, I want to do more movies but I can't really do them all the time because otherwise like my entire life would just be doing these movie videos that I've absolutely no free time whatsoever. But I hope you enjoyed you know in this video I tried to do a bunch of new stuff like with every video, you know I take some of the old and then I make some new and then I try and mix them together in a way that I think is interesting. With this video, I tried to do a lot of new stuff just because I don't know why I just felt like I should so I tried to draw a bunch of new stuff I could come up with some new ideas and some new effects and new things like that. So I hope you enjoyed it! It was fun to make movies like this are always fun for me to do especially from the stand point of where I come from with my videos just because it's like I mean, it really is a gold mine, you know It's like all of the worst of Riverdale kind of distilled into one video and it's just begging for me to make a video about it I mean, you know as much as I harp on movies like this or TV shows like this like, you know there's a part of me that kind of enjoys it in some way. Just kind of that cheesy romance that I never had when I was in high school, but watching it played out and this like overly dramatic, overly candy-coated, you know gumdrop sweet movie thing or whatever, you know it uh, I don't know. It's kind of a weird guilty pleasure of mine for whatever reason. Anyway, thank you so much for watching. Don't forget to subscribe, ring that bell, flip that switch, whatever it is nowadays. Follow me on Twitter I try to reply to everything that I get So if you want to say hello or a give me a suggestion for a TV show or whatever it is I can go ahead and do that. Follow my dog Charlie on Instagram, charlie_meets_pumpkin. And above all else, have a great day everybody. And I'll see you all next time.
