The Kissing Booth is a romantic comedy film where the main character’s first kiss turns into a whole saga of events. With the first movie coming out in 2018, the second and third movies were not far behind, releasing in 2020 and 2021. The movie series is based on a 2012 novel from Wattpad, a website where writers can produce user-generated stories. The story line was written and directed by Vince Marcello, who has directed and written several other popular films such as Teen Beach Movie and multiple American Girl movies.

   All three of the movies are jaw-dropping, tear jerking and a rollercoaster of emotions. However, they are high in second-hand embarrassment and include an abundance of moments that make viewers want to pull away from the screen and take a moment to say, “Calm down, everyone. Wow.”

  The series is based around three main characters, Elle, Lee and Noah. Lee and Elle are best friends, and have been since birth. Ironically, they were born on the exact same day of the same month and at the same time. Noah is Lee’s older brother who is conveniently extremely good looking and because this movie trilogy is so cliché, Elle, of course, has a crush on him. 

   Soon enough, it is more than a little crush. Elle, the never-been kissed, innocent and harmless little girl she was, is wiped away in a whirl of events that take place during the first movie.

   Elle and Lee are juniors and hosts of the Dance Club. For the homecoming festival, they’re holding a kissing booth, where the students, well, kiss. It is a perfect way to spread an infectious disease quite quickly throughout the school, but this is the Kissing Booth realm and somehow that logic does not apply here. Conveniently, when Elle is pushed on stage to kiss an unknown stranger, Noah shows up and decides to take his place next in line. Noah is aware he is about to kiss Elle and still continues on, showing signs he feels the same about her as she does about him. Elle still thinks this is a complete stranger and is shocked when she takes off her blindfold to reveal that it is none other than Noah Flynn, her best friend’s brother. Then, while fully aware of who each other was kissing and in what seems to be an appropriate mindset, they continue to make-out on the stage, in front of the entire school. 

   In normal high schools, this would probably be shocking and honestly slightly disturbing, but as this is the Kissing Booth realm, this is apparently completely normal and a bit of an accomplishment.

   The problem is, however, that this moment leads to many, many interesting events. Some of which are nice, happy, “unicorn-rainbows” events, and some that are heated, disturbing, heart-wrenching, uncomfortable, sad and depressing events.

   In the first movie, the majority of it is Elle and Noah hiding their relationship from every single person they know and love. One of the major rules of Elle and Lee’s friendship is to never be romantically involved with either of their family members. Now that Noah and Elle are dating, when the secret gets out, Lee is hurt the most. He gets over it though, and so does everyone else.

   The second movie felt like a filler, it mainly revolved around Noah and Elle’s long distance relationship and feelings of jealousy. Elle suspects Noah is cheating on her with Chloe, his friend he made during his time in Harvard, and Noah watches Elle kiss a new classmate, Marco, who competed with her in a Dance Dance Revolution competition that they won. The second movie is just full of fighting and arguments with disappointment after disappointment, whether it is between characters or in the plot itself. The second movie did tone down the aggressiveness of Noah, however, and his character development definitely showed since the last movie. 

   The third movie is probably the best and it threw viewers for a loop. Viewers expect one thing to happen, then another thing happens. The first major event of the plot is the Flynn parent’s decision to sell the beach house. This house has been a major connecting point in all of the movies as they spend most of their summers here. It also helps show events of the past and introduces backgrounds, such as when Elle, Lee and Noah were little. They end up deciding not to sell it, though, since it was full of memories.

   Elle and Lee graduated high school in the last movie, so the third movie revolved around the summer between their senior year and first year of college. Elle and Lee had always planned on going to a college in California together, but Elle is also pressured into going to Harvard with Noah in Boston. She gets accepted into both, and spends the entire summer debating which to go to. She lets her heart take control of her mind and chooses to go to Harvard with Noah.

   Because this is a high school love story, and Elle’s first boyfriend, things do not work out between them. Noah finds out that Elle was accepted to go to Berkeley with Lee, and decides to end things. Noah did not want to be the root cause of a decision that Elle was going to regret later, and broke up with her under the Hollywood sign after he dramatically leaves from a party the night before. Supposedly, he had been under the Hollywood sign for over 24 hours, but who knows. That would seemingly be uncomfortable, but, hey, it is the Kissing Booth realm so it is totally fine. 

   On top of Elle’s dramatic and, honestly, quite predictable heartbreak, she gets in a fight with Lee. She is so busy chasing a man who clearly did not want to give her the time of day that she forgets the most important person in her life, Lee. They were supposed to spend time at the arcade before their Dance Dance Revolution machine got removed, but Elle was too late and Lee was already fuming when she got there. They made up eventually, as they always do, but it was quite a sad moment for their friendship. 

   Elle decides to go to University of South California to study game design. She decides to apply at USC because she did not want to go to Berkeley, and Harvard was obviously not an option since Noah still goes to school there. 

   “I honestly don’t know where to begin. It’s like the writers tried really hard to be funny and have a relatable ‘my best friend’s brother’ love arc, but it just turned out to be embarrassing and disappointing,” sophomore Sydney Houston says. “I don’t know why I wasted my time watching the movies. By the time I got towards the end of the third movie, I was so over it.”

  Six years later, and the end of the movie, Elle and Noah see each other for the first time in forever. Oh, how convenient that it happens to be right in front of the Kissing Booth that Lee and Elle ran back in junior and senior year. The movie does not explicitly say it, but it can be implied that they still have feelings for each other. Noah has somewhere to be, so they say goodbye and he walks up a set of stairs. At the top of the stairs, he turns and waves to Elle. This connects back to the first movie, when Noah left for college. He did not stand at the top of the stairs and wave down to Elle, he simply continued walking. It could also be implied that because of the little gesture Noah did not make the first time let viewers infer they would not make it, but now that he is standing there six years later waving, they will be together in the future and most likely be successful.

  In terms of tying up loose ends, it cleaned up nicely but still left a few loose pieces. The likelihood of a fourth Kissing Booth movie is pretty low, and the books that the movies are based off of ended here. Overall, the movie had a lot of nice moments but was filled to the brim with moments that scream, “Wow, how convenient!” It is not shocking the Rotten Tomato percentages were so low, given the severe vicarious embarrassment the movies produced. 

   “They were awful. It’s like Sharknado but worse,” sophomore Kannon Gailey says. “I probably won’t watch them again.” The Kissing Booth was cliché and while there were a lot of cute moments, it was disappointing and not even close to the best movie to enter the film industry.

   Even if the movies really were awful, it is good to say that they are finally done with. Even the Twitter page “Irredeemable Media of the Day” featured the whole Kissing Booth trilogy, proving the point that it really was that bad.

   Taking all of those facts into consideration, this movie deserves two stars out of five, and that is being very generous.