Based on ‘The Kissing Booth’ books by author Beth Reekles, The Kissing Booth is a Netflix teen romantic chick-flick that has taken pop culture by storm ever since its release. This Vince Marcello rom-com trilogy ticks all the boxes when it comes to what people want from a light-hearted chick flick. A high school setting? Check. An attractive cast? Check. A love triangle? Check. Lots of drama? Check! Not just romance but The Kissing Booth also ventures into the themes of friendship and self-realisation. With the release of each instalment, the Kissing Booth-verse increases until the latest release of The Kissing Booth 3 does well to give fans a satisfying and bittersweet conclusion. But before you watch the latest movie, let’s dive into what happened in the first two instalments to refresh the memory.
The Kissing Booth 1: Plot
Elle Evans (Joey King) and Lee Flynn (Joel Courtney) are the ideal bff unit. They share the same birthday and were born in the same hospital as well. Elle and Lee have a phenomenal bond and even have a list of rules that they must follow in their friendship. Having grown up together, Elle is very close to the Flynn family. Unfortunately, she lost her mother to terminal illness when she was only 14 and ever since then, Mrs. Flynn has been a mother figure to her.
Elle and Lee’s favourite thing to do together was performing on an arcade dance machine. Elle also seems to have a crush on Lee’s attractive and extremely tall elder brother Noah (Jacob Elordi). Noah gets into fights and rides a motorcycle, which gives him a bad boy persona that teenage girls seem to love. However, as Elle and Lee maintained a rule book in their friendship, rule number 9 stated that relatives of your best friends were off-limits when it came to dating.
During a fundraiser for their school, Elle and Lee represent the dance club together and organise a ‘kissing booth’. She tells the girls of their school that Noah would be present which excites everyone but despite Elle trying her best to convince him, Noah declines the offer. During the event, Lee realises that Noah might not show up so he steps up to the booth instead. This disappoints the girls who were expecting Noah and wished to kiss him. But things weren’t so bleak for Lee as a girl named Rachel (Meganne Young) steps up to the booth and kisses him.
The girls think that Elle has lied to them so they try to settle the score with her by making her kiss a random guy. However, Noah arrives and a blindfolded Elle ends up kissing him. Things escalate between the two but they date in secret as they weren’t allowed to be together according to Rule Number 9. One day, Lee walks in on them kissing and tackles Noah to the ground while being seemingly angry at Elle for breaking the rule. She alienates herself from the both of them but later, expresses her true feelings for Noah to Lee while dancing in the arcade.
Elle and Noah begin to date officially but since Noah was a senior, he had to leave for college. Having secured a seat in Harvard, Elle and Noah decide to give long-distance a shot. Elle believes that despite being unsure about making things work, a part of her will always belong to him.
The Kissing Booth 2: Plot
As Noah is off to Harvard, Elle is back to school for her senior year. However, the students gossip about them breaking up due to long distance. And Noah befriending an attractive British girl named Chloe doesn’t help as Elle begins to get insecure. He asks her to apply to Harvard but Elle had already planned to attend University of California, Berkeley with Lee since their childhood. Her plans end up clashing and Elle finds herself in the middle of crossroads.
Elle and Lee represent their club in the charity fair again and this time, Lee wants her to get the new attractive transfer student Marco (Taylor Zakhar Perez) to participate in the booth. Elle has a dancing competition in the arcade with Marco and wins, convincing him to be a part of their plan.
She goes to Boston to meet Noah where she finds Chloe’s earring under his pillow. This leads to a confrontation between them as she begins to suspect that he is secretly having an affair but Noah asks her to trust him. She also finds out that her family could not afford to educate her in a private college so she decides to enter an arcade dance competition to win money. She intended to participate with Lee who fakes an injury, causing Elle to partner with Marco. They spend a lot of time together and the attraction between them intensifies.
Lee and Rachel suffer through relationship problems due to Elle’s constant presence. Lee finds out about Elle’s plan to attend Harvard for Noah on the day of the competition which displeases him. Elle and Marco end up winning and she kisses him. However, Noah happens to be in the audience and sees everything. During a family Thanksgiving dinner, all the bottled up emotions between the three erupt.
Rachel breaks up with Lee and Elle learns that Chloe’s earring had fallen off her ear in Noah’s room while he wasn’t even there and that their dynamic was similar to that of Lee and Elle’s. Rachel and Lee end up getting back together while Elle shares another kiss with Marco. But she tells him that even though she had feelings for him, he wasn’t the one for her because Elle always knew that it was Noah. She gets back with Noah in the same park where they had kissed for the first time. Elle gets accepted to both Berkeley and Harvard but she tells everyone that she has only been put on the waiting lists as she had not made her decision yet.