The Kissing Booth: The Reception
The Kissing Booth was released May 2018, and it’s an understatement to say the reviews were mixed. On the one hand, critics hated it. Not just the critics who are paid to review movies, but also the kind who review movies for fun. The film has been the subject of many long-form comedy takedowns on YouTube. (I’ll link my favorites down below. Reviewers point out not only how bad the movie is overall, but also how toxic the relationship between the main characters is. Other points of contention are how much the camera sexualizes Elle, and how Noah’s deep anger and penchant for fighting is romanticized.
Around the time of the film's release, Kate Erbland reviewed it for Indie Wire. She writes, “The film combines classic narrative tropes of the genre – think a low-budget mishmash of ‘Pretty in Pink,’ ‘Never Been Kissed,’ ‘Mean Girls,’ and ‘Ten Things I Hate About You’ – but is also hobbled by a gross understanding of gender dynamics and what makes a healthy relationship.” I loved this review, because Erbland takes care to not criticize The Kissing Booth for what it is – a genre teen romance – but where it falls short of that category. The misogyny in the movie is egregious, and that’s where the issue is, not in the fact of its genre. Danny Gonzalez also focuses not just on the film's shortcomings as a movie but the ways in which it is problematic. He jokes in his review “But we need to know more about Noah, like who is this main love interest? We know that he’s violent, which is great, but the movie also has to show us how manipulative he is!” This leads into an explanation of Noah threatening all of the boys at school away from Elle, with the threat of physical violence. Every other negative review I’ve read points to these same things, which shows me that it’s not just my “politically correct” conscious seeing these issues. Pretty much every adult who watches the movie has the same response.
But how about non-adults watching the movie? Well, remember how I said the reviews were mixed? I didn’t mean that as a sugar-coated way to say the reviews were terrible. I meant it literally- the film is incredibly polarizing. A poster on google gave the movie five stars, writing “THIS MOVIE IS THE MOST ROMANTIC MOVIE IVE EVER SEEEEEN!!!! I NEVER CRY DURING MOVIES, BUT I DID WHILE WATCHING THIS ONE!!!!” Another writes “This is one of the best movies I have ever watched yaa I know it’s Is kinde of adult movie but it reveals that friendship can never be broken even though u have to leave the person u love for friendship.” Now, I cannot give physically proof of this, but I feel with certainty that these reviews were not written by adults. Both of these reviews also mention watching the film over and over, something we know to have happened. Though Netflix is infamous for not releasing their viewership statistics, they did share that in 2018, the year it was released, almost half of viewers watched the Kissing Booth more than once, making it the streaming platforms most streamed movie that year. That speaks to the kind of fan-base this film has– relatively small, but incredibly dedicated.
It’s not hard to picture. Jacob Elordi is one of the most conventionally attractive human beings I’ve ever seen, and Joey King does a great job of putting just enough personality into Elle, where she’s not boring to watch but you can still transpose your characteristics onto her. That’s not a criticism– that’s what these movies are for, and there’s nothing wrong with that. While I love the writing of While You Were Sleeping, I don’t watch it for the plot. I watch it because young Bill Pullman is hot and I see myself in Sandra Bullock’s character. But While You Were Sleeping does not romanticize a relationship that would be dangerous in real life. The Kissing Booth normalizes and trivializes behavior that is abusive in the real world, and the idea of a middle school girl watching it over and over hurts my heart. Because what if when her friends and her family warn her that her boyfriend is dangerous, she thinks that he’s just like Noah? Noah isn’t real– he’s never actually going to hit Elle. But if a real life guy was acting the way Noah acts, whoever he sets his eye on is in real danger.
That’s the part of the movie’s success that concerns me, not the fact that the movie itself isn’t that good. In some ways, the fact that the movie is such a success with teen girls has become part of the ridicule. A teen girl wrote it, teen girls love it, and look what a heaping pile of trash it is! This is not the intent of all the reviews, but it is the subtext. Jaime French (who I love, and am not aiming to criticize) said, “the whole time I was watching it, I kept having this recurring thought: this seems like it was written by a twelve year old girl… And it makes a lot more sense finding out that it is.”
That twelve year old girl in question is Beth Reekles, who was actually fifteen when she self published The Kissing Booth on Wattpad. The story won the Wattpad 2011 Most Popular Teen Fiction prize, and by 17 she had been offered a book deal with Penguin Random House. The book was officially released in 2012, and Beth Reekles was on Time magazine's list of “The 16 Most Influential Teens of 2013.” If all that seems incredibly impressive to you, that’s because it is. So in the next and final installment, I’m going to dive into something that’s been bugging me this whole time; how does the book itself map onto the movie? How many of the scenes that have drawn so much ire: Elle going on a date with the boy who groped her, Noah calling her completely naked like some sort of cartoon villain, and Elle strip teasing in the boys bathroom, are actually from the source text? I hope you’ll join me in this venture. Thank you! As always, feel free to reach out in the comments down below or through my email, honeyblogxoxo@gmail.com.
I Wouldn’t Participate in a Kissing Booth for your Fundraiser But I Still Love You,
Pure
Links:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXDWjYWlqpQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mch7dEd2KCM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beth_Reekles
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