Directed by: Vince Marcello
Starring: Joey King, Jacob Elordi, Joel Courtney, Molly Ringwald, Taylor Zakhar Perez, Maisie Richardson-Sellers
If there was ever a group of friends who needed a break from each other, it's these folks. Kissing Booth 3 picks up where Kissing Booth 2 left off, with Elle (King) agonizing over whether to attend University of California with her lifelong best friend Lee (Courtney) or Harvard to be near her boyfriend Noah (Elordi). Decisions, decisions. At least she'll be able to spend the Southern California summer at Lee's summer home on the beach to figure things out. But, they had better take advantage while they can because Lee's and Noah's mother (Ringwald) is Selling the House. If you take into account how often Elle argues with Lee, then Noah, then Lee again, then Noah again, other friends, and then inexorably makes up with all of them only to fight with them all over again, you will see why Elle should find an alternative school to attend.
If it weren't for arguing, bickering, complaining, and fighting, these people wouldn't communicate at all, but at least that's an improvement from Kissing Booth 2, in which everyone kept their emotions bottled up until they exploded. Or maybe it isn't. Either way, Elle, Lee, and Noah all need a serious timeout. Elle's decision will surely disappoint either Lee or Noah. I may be divulging a spoiler, but she decides to go to Harvard to be with Noah, with whom she has had zero chemistry since the first film. He's the brooding type who has learned to stop punching everyone who looks at him funny. Now, he just averts his eyes when he's hurt and that seems to be just about every day while dealing with Elle,
Elle and company manage to stay at the summer home and ready the place for buyers. If you're expecting a Brady Bunch situation in which Elle and the others sabotage the sale, then you'll be disappointed. Since Elle upsets the tantrum-throwing Lee with her college decision, she decides the two should check off items on a bucket list they created when they were younger. For a while, they are able to start a flash mob (ugh), race around a kiddie race track while dressed as characters from Super Mario Brothers, etc. It must be more fun to actually do these things than it is to watch them.
But Elle is soon stretched thin by trying to please everyone, while holding down a server job at a restaurant in which the tables look to be arranged on someone's back patio. Yes, she also babysits her younger brother so her father can date a woman Elle disapproves of because how dare dad date again years after his wife's passing. Elle's relationship with her father in the two previous movies consisted of one or two scenes just to establish that she still has one living parent. She has no other reason to despise her father's girlfriend except to add yet one more conflict to a young woman's life that already has too many for someone her age. The screenwriters have piled more on Elle than she should be forced to handle.
Elle also is saddled with narrating Kissing Booth 3 as if we needed its intricacies explained to us. Yay for us. We can now rejoice in listening to the lessons Elle has learned (i.e. do what makes you happy). Joy, joy, joy. For the sake of realism, would it kill the filmmakers to cast actors or even extras in these Kissing Booth movies that don't look like they walked in from a nearby modeling shoot? I'm sure I mentioned in this in my review of one or both of the previous films, and it's a complaint yet again. Anyone in this cast could grace the cover of a magazine on their his or her worst day. The pool parties are chock full of people with maybe one percent body fat between them.
It appears the Kissing Booth series has reached a merciful end. But in show business, never say never. We may see an article stating how a Kissing Booth reboot or fourth installment "is happening". Joy, joy, joy.
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