The Kissing Booth 2 (2020)

dir. Vince Marcello

Sequel to 2018’s The Kissing Booth and the second of a projected trilogy, The Kissing Booth 2 manages to perform the impossible and is somehow an even worse film than its predecessor. Joey King’s Elle finds her already toxic romance threatened when her boyfriend Noah moves to Harvard. To Elle’s dismay, girls exist at Harvard, and so with no evidence whatsoever she becomes convinced Noah is cheating on her. Meanwhile she finds herself enamoured by a new boy at her own school, Marco, to whom she grows closer through the frankly unbelievable plot device of a national “Dance Dance Revolution”-style electronic dancing game competition through which she can win enough cash to fund her potential studies at an Ivy League school. Sure, yeah, okay. Her best friend is being as much of an entitled incel as ever, treating his girlfriend horrifically because he quite blatantly only has eyes for Elle, even though no one ever says so. And for some reason, the kissing booth spontaneously pops up again, because the title needs to have some vague reason for being.