How ‘The Kissing Booth’ won hearts
Netflix’s chief content officer called the film ‘one of the mostwatched movies’ in the US
They had just finished up a round of Skee-Ball when they were spotted by a couple of teenage girls meekly clutching iPhones.
“We love The Kissing Booth,” one of the young women exclaimed. “Can we take a selfie with you?”
The three stars of the Netflix film — Joey King, 18, Jacob Elordi, 21, and Joel Courtney, 22 — obliged of course. Since the film’s release in May, they said, they’ve been approached like this hundreds of times.
“Every day, at least a couple of times a day,” Elordi said. “Some people are strange, but most of the young kids are awesome. The other night I was eating by myself at a diner and a group of college friends asked me if I wanted to sit with them, so I did.”
A year ago, this would have never happened to him — certainly not in America, anyway. Not long ago, he was an aspiring actor living in Brisbane, Australia, whose biggest role to date was playing an uncredited marine in the fifth Pirates of the Caribbean movie.
Before The Kissing Booth hit Netflix this spring, he had 15,000 followers on Instagram. Now, he has 4.3 million.
His costars, meanwhile, grew up as kid actors in Hollywood. Courtney was 14 when he scored his first big role in J.J. Abrams’ Super 8, and King just 10 when she starred opposite Selena Gomez as the iconic Beverly Cleary character Ramona Quimby in Ramona and Beezus.
But despite years of building up solid resumes none of their projects have given them the instant recognition of The Kissing Booth. Earlier this month, Ted Sarandos, Netflix’s chief content officer, called the film “one of the most-watched movies in the country, and maybe in the world.”
Which, frankly, no one expected.
The film is based on a story written by a 15-yearold, and it first appeared on Wattpad, an online self-publishing platform. It follows an upbeat teenager named Elle (King) whose high school existence is going swimmingly until she falls for her best friend’s hunky older brother (Courtney plays the BFF, Elordi the BF).
In other words, The Kissing Booth is cute enough, but the majority of critics have declared it an objectively bad movie: It has a 14 per cent rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
But as Vulture put it, the romantic comedy is “bad in a comforting way. Most of the plot points and supporting characters are blatant rip-offs of earlier teen films, which gives the film a similar quality to those pop songs that build their hooks by sampling previous hits.”
It’s also an intriguing new piece in the ongoing puzzle known as Netflix original movies. While the streaming giant has produced a slew of respected, award-nominated television fare — Orange Is the New Black, House of Cards, Making a Murderer — its film content has yet to make the same kind of broad impact.
Few, if any, of Netflix’s movies outside of its film library have been aimed at young people. Which is partially why the company decided to produce The Kissing Booth, financing the film’s twomonth shoot in South Africa last year.
“We had 13 Reasons Why and Stranger Things on the series side, but it was a space we hadn’t explored much on the film side,” said Ian Bricke, Netflix’s director of independent film. “We thought this had a Disney Channel vibe, but felt slightly more grounded — it felt like an interesting, underserved spot between younger YA and edgier teen fare.”
The film’s cast said it views The Kissing Booth as a throwback to the kind of teen movie the film business rarely makes anymore — “like if She’s the Man and Mean Girls had a little, bitty baby,” King said.
“It’s like they’re bringing back the old favourites, because there haven’t been any movies out in the last couple of years like Kissing Booth. It’s an old-school rom-com, and I love that,” she continued.
“[The movie] felt like an interesting, underserved spot between younger YA and edgier teen fare.” IAN BRICKE | Netflix’s director of independent film