Teen Dream Scheme

She’s All That

To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before

Keeping things relatively chill this week, we’re visiting another couple of light-hearted, low-stakes, somewhat cheesy chick flicks whose stories are driven by an oddly inescapable trope among rom-coms: the fake date. There’s just something about the tumultuous time of high school that inspires stories of schemes and romance, and if She’s All That and To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before are any indication, the premise of the phony relationship has both a history and a future. Tonight’s films revolved around similarly irresponsible schemes, but there’s actually many things, despite their nearly 20 year difference, that unify these two movies: girls who are virtually ignored despite their obvious beauty and charm, boys with dumb voices and plots that are completely misguided, mean girls with biting banter, and a mixed bag of dialogue that ranged from cringe to brilliant. As much as I groan at the corniness of high school love affairs and the predictable formulas they implement, there’s a reason why they work. The feeling of wanting to be loved by someone, of feeling alone or misunderstood or scared to open up, these are themes of life itself—it’s just that for some reason, we feel more comfortable exploring these vulnerable thoughts through the lens of unpracticed and unaware teenagers. She’s All That was a rather strange teenage love story, that chose to center its plot upon the popular, dashingly handsome student class president, and not the quiet, mysterious girl who the story is really about. She’s All That is essentially the story of Pygmalion, but it’s also many things. It is a time capsule of 1999, for one, due to its fashion, music, and star-studded cast (Freddie Prinze Jr., Rachael Leigh-Cook, Matthew Lillard, Paul Walker, Gabrielle Union, Clea Duvall, and if you can believe it, Usher and Lil Kim.) But this movie is also a testament to the point of view that Y2K had to offer. The youth of nineties and early 2000s media had a lot to say, it just appears that they didn’t all have the direction or moral compass of Cher from Clueless. She’s All That is a fun retelling of what was initially a Greek tragedy, but even with its stance on environmentalism and attempt at feminism, it felt far from a feel-good, modern love story. Perhaps it was the fact that Freddie Prinze Jr. (who is best portrayed in this Scooby Doo interview) was playing the smartest kid in school (when all I could hear was Keanu in Chain Reaction talking about electrons), or maybe it’s the fact that Rachael Leigh-Cook’s character forgives her fake-turned-real boyfriend so easily, but She’s All That was lacking just slightly. Last week I mentioned how She’s the Man was able to point out and poke fun at toxic masculinity and the impossibility of gender roles, and in doing so take away some of the power of these things. She’s All That wasn’t as clever with its usage of casual sexism, and instead chose to earnestly administer micro aggressions that would typically be perceived as somewhat rude if Freddie Prinze Jr. weren’t saying them. Like when his character, Zach, says to Rachael Leigh-Cook’s character, Laney (who, like my sister, Lanie, was also “scary and inaccessible” in high school), “You ever think about smiling more?”—one of the more innocuously inconsiderate jabs made at the female characters in this film. And overused plot-points aside, I don’t really understand why Laney, someone who is characterized by her strong-willed personality and overall stubbornness, would give into the popular kids’ demands so easily. It’s realistic that this outcast of a character wouldn’t be accepted by the cool kids or the goth lesbians in her art class, but it doesn’t make sense why she would suddenly want to gain their approval. All the time that was spent showing Matthew Lillard dance like a fool could’ve been used to build up the relationship of our protagonists, but the writers of this film made their priorities clear. The effort and the vibe was there with this movie, I’m just not sure if its love story is viable. And I know you might be thinking, “Lili, you dumb bitch, teen rom com love stories are never viable” but I’m not so sure. There’s certainly plenty of fictional teenage relationships that didn’t pan out, but that doesn’t discount palpable chemistry that can be found along the way, and that was also missing here. This is not to say that She’s All That wasn’t a good time, though, and I shan’t ever forget the line: “One second, you're Zach Siler, class president, stand-out athlete, all-around bad-ass mamba-jahamba; the next thing you know, you're Zach Siler, bitch-boy”. Writing about youth is challenging, regardless of the abundance of people who try to do so, but it’s not hard to give these characters depth or nuanced feelings. The emotions and conditions of adolescence that are just pantomimed in She’s All That, are fully realized in To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before. It was surprising to me, a millennial / gen z cusp, that any new rom com for teenagers could be good. I’d thought I’d moved past these movies, or that they slowly became less for me, but To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before has everything one could need from this genre. In addition to a ridiculous scheme involving two more teens living in denial of their love for each other, there are a myriad of perfect references, song choices, and lines of dialogue in this film. Lara Jean is a character I could instantly empathize with, and her fear of uncertainty is something we’ve all wrestled with—particularly during our teenage years. This movie places some emphasis upon idealized versions of love and relationships, which feels right, considering the fact that the greatest loves of my high school experience were all unrequited, but felt just as real. Lara Jean is the ultimate bystander, even more so than She’s all That’s Laney and her surprising fearlessness, and it was nice to see her come out of her shell and allow herself to be loved. The thing is, with high school movies and with high school in real life, teenagers are cruel as fuck. And learning to trust and let yourself be loved in that environment, is a feat worth celebrating, and writing books and movies about. Noah Centineo’s Peter Kavinsky was just as infuriating as Freddie Prinze Jr., but this film was able to showcase a more natural progression from scumbag to sweetheart within his relationship with Lara Jean. This story also takes the time to let us get to know our main characters—portraying a beautiful friendship between sisters, a believable bitterness between ex-friends, and ultimately developing a romance we can all root for. The love story in To All The Boys I Loved Before is wrapped up in a hare-brained scheme, but it feels more organic than others in this category. Between Noah Centineo’s sleepy, young Mark Ruffalo vibes and Lana Condor’s believable kindness, this movie was crafted and curated to perfection. Cheesiness and corniness aside, the teenage dream scheme is a genre that stands the rest of time because it harkens back to a time we’ve all suffered through. They say the only certainty in life is death, but there are other things we can be certain of too: the amount that high school sucks, and the level to which movies will try to glamorize it and convince us that love can come in the form of silly teenage hijinks.