Ahh. The end to the To All The Boys trilogy… the epic Netflix saga about a cute teenager and her fraught high school existence. By which I mean, a life full of crises that only a middle class American teenage girl can dramatize. The stakes this time are about as high as they’ve ever been… and be careful not to bump your knee while watching them.

This time Lara Jean and her hunky boyfriend (who, as we’ll recall, was the wrong guy to choose in the last movie… but bygones…) are applying to college. He gets into Stanford… she gets rejected. Whatever will they do? Add in some subplots like her father (John Corbett) popping the question to the woman next door, some low key drama with her older sister, her younger sister crushing on a Korean boy she met on a family trip and you get… well, you get a big bowl of cotton candy.

And, hey, cotton candy is good. Especially when it continues to be acted (to torture a metaphor) by the charm and charisma of this cast. Lana Condor is the lead again and she’s really grown on me over three movies. I think she should have a good career outside these movies. Corbett is always great even when his movies aren’t. Noah Centineno – perhaps because he doesn’t have a romantic rival – comes across as a charming and understanding boyfriend. Everyone is doing well and that’s partly just due to (make fun of it all I want) this being the third film in an unlikely franchise.

One thing I kind of dug about the film (and the last one if memory serves) is that the relationship is cute and bubbly and all that jazz… but also pretty honest and mature. In most movies with this plot, whether she tells her boyfriend she didn’t get into the same college would be the central drama of the entire film. But this film continuously surprises me at least when such drama is played for a short time and is then revealed. Because it wouldn’t make sense (even in bubblegum confection like this) to keep it a secret. And there’s similar drama and believable human reactions throughout.

Can’t believe one of my main praises of this film is that it was mature and kind of smart about relationships. At least by the standard of usual hackneyed Hollywood Rom-Coms. But there ya go… blame it on three movie’s worth of charm. I dug this flick. I – to my surprise – dug this epic trilogy.

Score: 84