Netflix’s The Kissing Booth 2 runs 132 minutes, and the sequel to the 2018 hit spends most of them asking a question it already answered. Elle Evans has Noah Flynn. She also has Lee Flynn, her best friend and Noah’s brother. The film’s tagline warns that “Rules can be broken…but so can hearts.”
Trailer, via Netflix.
Elle Evans and the Harvard Problem
Director Vince Marcello returns, co-writing with Jay Arnold. Joey King leads again as Elle, with Jacob Elordi as Noah and Joel Courtney as Lee. Molly Ringwald plays Mrs. Flynn. The plot picks up in Elle’s senior year, and it wastes no time on setup.
Classmates gossip that Elle and Noah are breaking up. Noah has befriended Chloe Winthrop, a British girl, on Instagram. Maisie Richardson-Sellers plays Chloe. Elle’s fear grows from there.
Noah suggests Elle apply to Harvard. That clashes with her lifelong plan to attend University of California, Berkeley with Lee, where their mothers met and became best friends. She applies secretly. Her father, Mr. Evans, tells her money is a problem, so she joins Lee in a dance competition with a cash prize for first place.
Then Elle visits Noah in Boston. She meets his new friends and Chloe. She finds Chloe’s earring under Noah’s bed and leaves early. Noah assures her nothing happened and asks her to trust him. She stays skeptical.
Marco Peña and the Kissing Booth
Lee and Elle are planning the kissing booth again for the Charity Fair. Lee wants Marco Peña, a new transfer student dubbed the new “Noah Flynn,” to be one of the kissers. Taylor Zakhar Perez plays Marco.
Elle beats Marco at a dancing game and forces him into the booth. Later, Lee slips during practice — a slip later revealed to be fake — and proposes Marco as Elle’s dance partner. She resists, then agrees. As Marco and Elle spend time together, an attraction develops.
Here is the film’s actual structure, laid out plainly:
- Elle’s long-distance romance with Noah, strained by Chloe
- Elle’s friendship with Lee, strained by his girlfriend Rachel
- Elle’s new partnership with Marco, which becomes something else
- Elle’s college decision, kept secret from Lee and her father
That is four plots. The Kissing Booth 2 gives each one roughly equal weight and resolves none of them with any force.
Lee Flynn, Rachel, and the Costume Nobody Told Her About
Lee has problems with Rachel, played by Meganne Young, and Elle does not know. Elle goes everywhere with them, so they get no time alone. After forgetting Rachel at the movies, Lee promises to talk with Elle about it. He never does.
At the Halloween Dance, Lee forgets to tell Rachel they changed costumes. The source cuts off there, but the shape is clear: Lee’s dishonesty runs parallel to Elle’s. Neither gets a real reckoning.
Compare the two leads and the film’s double standard becomes obvious:
| Character | Secret | Who gets hurt | Consequence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Elle Evans | Harvard application, dance partnership with Marco | Lee, Noah | Treated as growth |
| Lee Flynn | Fake slip, hiding the Rachel problem | Rachel, Elle | Played for laughs |
Elle’s secrets drive the plot. Lee’s secrets are a subplot. The film never notices the difference.
Chloe Winthrop and the Earring Under the Bed
Chloe is the sequel’s most efficient device and its least developed character. She exists to make Elle insecure, and she does it well: the Instagram friendship, the Boston trip, the earring under the bed. Richardson-Sellers gets almost nothing to play beyond being attractive and British.
Noah’s defense is that nothing happened. The film asks us to believe him and also to understand why Elle does not. That is a fair tension. It is also the same tension the first film ran, with different furniture.
The supporting cast fills out the margins. Carson White plays Brad Evans. Stephen Jennings plays Mr. Evans. Bianca Bosch, Camilla Wolfson and Zandile Madliwa appear as Olivia, Mia and Gwyneth. None of them get a scene that matters.
The Kissing Booth 2 Review: A Sequel That Repeats Itself
The Kissing Booth 2 was released on July 24, 2020, by Netflix. It is the second installment in a trilogy based on Beth Reekles’ books, and a third film followed on August 11, 2021. Like its predecessor, it drew generally negative reviews.
The score is 3.9 of 10, matching a Metacritic mark of 39 out of 100. That is not a close call. It is a verdict.
The problem is not the premise. Teen romances run on bad decisions, and Elle makes plenty. The problem is that the film cannot decide whether Elle’s choices are mistakes or milestones. She applies to Harvard in secret, partners with Marco in secret, and the movie treats both as evidence of growth. The one person who calls her out is Lee, and Lee is lying too.
The runtime is the other issue. At 132 minutes, The Kissing Booth 2 is longer than most films in its genre and uses the extra time for repetition. Elle worries about Noah. Elle worries about Lee. Elle worries about Marco. The worries cycle without escalating.
What works is King. She carries the film’s emotional load without much help from the script, and she makes Elle’s indecision feel like a person rather than a plot mechanism. Elordi has less to do here than in the first film; Noah is mostly a voice on a phone and a source of suspicion. Courtney gets the film’s only genuinely complicated thread, and the movie drops it.
The dance competition, the kissing booth, the Boston trip — these are set pieces, not story. They are staged with energy and resolved with convenience. Marco’s arc in particular ends exactly where the sequel needs it to end, not where the character would take it.
The Kissing Booth 2 is not a disaster. It is a holding pattern. It exists to keep three characters apart until a third film can put them back together, and it does that job with competence and no urgency. The tagline promises broken hearts. The film delivers a holding pattern instead.
3.9 of 10.
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