If you frothed over To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before as hard as I did, you’re going to want to stock up on tissues because the sequel, To All The Boys: P.S. I Still Love You has just dropped on Netflix.
The film picks up where it left off with Lara Jean and Peter Kavinsky continuing their relationship. However, a spanner is thrown into the works when she is reunited with John Ambrose, another recipient of one of her letters.
Listen to the GOAT team break down the To All The Boys sequel on It’s Been A Big Day For…below:
The To All The Boys sequel is already receiving lots of love on social media and has even racked up a score of 75% on Rotten Tomatoes after just one day of release.
Apart from drawing audiences in by reflecting the often awkward and uncomfortable moments of dating during highschool, the TATBILB franchise is also making an effort to improve representation and gender equality in film and TV.
The film’s soundtrack, which is already receiving plenty of praise online, heavily features female artists including MARINA, BLACKPINK, Gordi, Tegan and Sara, Anna of the North, Nina Nesbitt, Sasha Sloan and Charlotte Lawrence and more.
It’s a similar story for The Bold Type, a TV series that only use artists that identify as woman or non-binary on its soundtrack.
These decisions to create more gender equality in the music that underpins our favourite TV shows and movies couldn’t have come at a better time. This week, fans took to social media to highlight the lack of female artists on the 2020 Reading and Leeds Festival lineup.
Out of the 92 names billed on the poster, only 20 are women. The Instagram account @lineupswithoutmales has also highlighted the lack of female representation in festival lineups, even here in Australia.
Gender equality isn’t the only cause TATBILB has been fighting for. It is also hailed as the first mainstream teen romance to feature an Asian-American lead. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Lana Condor – who plays Lara Jean in the film – said, “As a young girl, I never got to see a Cinderella moment where the girl looked like me.”
“This is the most important part of the story for me is being able to represent our community. It’s creating a space for Asian-Americans to tell their story and have a moment.” In another interview with Variety, she also acknowledged that the industry still has a long way to go, but at least it’s a step in the right direction.
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