To All the Boys: P.S. I Still Love You

I remember watching this sequel while sitting on my sofa with a bowl of slightly stale Haribo gummy bears—the kind that are so tough they give your jaw a workout. It felt like the only appropriate snack for a Netflix sequel: sweet, familiar, but maybe a little tougher to get through than the first batch. There’s a specific kind of pressure that comes with a "streaming event" movie, especially one following a legitimate cultural reset like 2018’s To All the Boys I've Loved Before. In an era where Netflix was frantically trying to prove the rom-com wasn't dead, just hibernating on a server in Los Gatos, this film arrived with the weight of a thousand "Team Peter" tweets on its shoulders.

The Instagram-Filtered Reality

The first thing I noticed about P.S. I Still Love You is that it looks like it was birthed directly from a high-end Pinterest board. Michael Fimognari, who served as the cinematographer on the first film, stepped into the director’s chair here, and you can tell. The colors are punchier, the symmetry is more Wes Anderson-lite, and every frame of Lara Jean’s bedroom looks like it was curated by a professional stager.

Lana Condor remains the absolute glue of this franchise. She has this incredible ability to make "anxious internal monologue" feel like a superpower. As Lara Jean Song Covey, she navigates the terrifying transition from a "fake" relationship to a "real" one with Noah Centineo’s Peter Kavinsky. Centineo, who the internet collectively decided was the second coming of the young Mark Ruffalo back in 2018, leans heavily into his puppy-dog charm here. However, I found myself wondering if the film relies a bit too much on Peter’s squinty-eyed smirk to solve actual personality flaws.

The central conflict arises when John Ambrose McClaren (Jordan Fisher) responds to the final "lost" love letter. Fisher enters the frame with a level of charisma that frankly should be illegal. He’s soulful, he plays the piano, and he volunteers at a retirement home. He is the "Perfect On Paper" alternative, and his arrival triggers the classic sequel trap: making us question the foundation of the original movie just to keep the plot moving.

The Battle of the Boyfriends

There was a massive social media campaign around this release—a very "Contemporary Cinema" move where the marketing leans into fan tribalism. You were either Team Peter or Team John Ambrose. Watching it now, away from the 2020 hype cycle, John Ambrose is objectively the better choice, but the movie is too scared of its own audience to actually let him win.

The film captures that specific Gen Z anxiety about "firsts"—first real date, first Valentine’s Day, first time feeling like a "girlfriend" rather than a crush. It’s handled with a gentleness that I appreciated, avoiding the hyper-sexualized grit of shows like Euphoria in favor of something that feels like a warm blanket. But there’s a trade-off. By leaning so hard into the "aesthetic" of the romance, some of the messy, grounded heart of the first film gets lost in the laundry. I was actually distracted for ten minutes by a neighbor's car alarm during the big aquarium scene, and honestly, I didn't feel like I missed a single beat of the emotional subtext because the movie telegraphs its feelings with the subtlety of a neon sign.

One of the best parts of this era of filmmaking is the casual, meaningful representation. Lara Jean being Korean-American isn't a "plot point" or a source of trauma; it’s just who she is. We see the Hanbok, we see the New Year traditions, and it’s woven into the fabric of her life. It’s a sign of how far we’ve come from the 80s and 90s rom-coms where the "diverse" friend was a walking trope. Here, the Song-Covey sisters, including the scene-stealing Anna Cathcart as Kitty, are the undisputed heart of the story.

Stuff You Didn't Notice

If you look closely at the Bellewood retirement home scenes, you might recognize the architecture. It was filmed at Point Grey Secondary School in Vancouver—the same school attended by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg. It’s funny to think about Superbad and To All the Boys sharing the same DNA, however distantly.

Interestingly, Jordan Fisher wasn't the original John Ambrose. If you re-watch the very end of the first movie, a different actor (Jordan Burtchett) shows up at the door with flowers. When the sequel got the green light and the budget ballooned, the producers decided they needed a "star" for the role, leading to Fisher’s casting. It’s one of those "streaming era" pivots where a surprise hit gets a shiny upgrade for the follow-up.

Another fun detail: Michael Fimognari actually pulled double duty, directing the film while also acting as his own Director of Photography. This is why the film feels so visually consistent with the first one, even if the directorial energy shifted. The soundtrack, too, was a massive priority; Netflix knew that a single "Lana Jean" playlist on Spotify could generate more marketing than a billboard in Times Square.

Ultimately, P.S. I Still Love You is a cozy, if slightly unnecessary, extension of a story that probably could have ended at the track field in movie one. It’s a film that knows exactly what its audience wants—slow-motion walks, soft lighting, and a few "Who do I choose?" sighs—and it delivers those things with professional precision. It doesn't quite capture the lightning-in-a-bottle magic of its predecessor, but it serves as a sweet, pastel-colored time capsule of the 2020 streaming boom. If you’re looking for a low-stakes evening and have a bag of gummy bears handy, you could certainly do worse than spending another 100 minutes in Lara Jean’s world.