I didn’t have high hopes for The Kissing Booth 3, but somehow it still shocked me just how awful the movie was. It was yet another addition to a series that should have stopped after movie number one.

I was less than twenty minutes in when I felt the need to quit. I took a long break and could not bring myself to finish the movie for quite a while. When I eventually finished it, there was much to dislike.

The first ten minutes of the movie was all montages filled with pointless information. Throughout the rest of the movie, there were one or two more montages, though they were not as bad as the others. 

Now, most of the time a bad plot can be made up for by attractive or intriguing actors, but when the characters the actors play are just downright terrible, nothing can save the movie. There was one character I enjoyed—a minor character who was in four scenes—whom we were introduced to in the second movie: Chloe Winthrop, played by Maisie Richardson-Sellers. She was the most realistic character to me because she seemed like someone I would meet in real life.

However, most of the other characters were selfish and spoiled. Elle—played by Joey King—was running around like a headless chicken trying to make everyone in her life happy when all they did was complain. 

The main premise of the movie was a bucket list Elle and Lee Flynn (Joel Courtney) made when they were kids. Elle decided to complete the entire list with Lee as a fun last summer before college in case she chose to go to school at Harvard with her boyfriend, Noah Flynn (Jacob Elordi). The list was originally a fun idea, but it ended up just leading to more drama. While completing the list, Elle had to juggle work, family, her boyfriend, and helping Lee’s mom (Molly Ringwald) sell their beach house.

The beach house was another key plot point. Lee and Noah’s parents decided to sell their beach house, but the kids convinced the parents to allow them to stay there for one last summer. The beach house was where Elle, Lee, and Noah grew up every summer, so it was hard for them to say goodbye. However, I found the overall outcome to be foreseeable, and it didn’t add any value to the movie. 

The beach house was also where Elle and Noah had a lot of fights over the summer. Noah was reasonably upset with Elle for allowing Marco (Taylor Zakhar Perez)—the guy Elle kissed at a dancing competition in the Kissing Booth 2—back into their lives after Noah asked her not to. After a while, Marco and Noah started to fight as well, which led to more drama for Elle to deal with.  This annoyed me to no end because almost all of the fights between Noah and El could have been avoided had El listened to Noah about Marcos’s true intentions. Marco pushed his luck too far and was dramatically upset when El and Noah finally said enough was enough. 

While talking about relationships, I feel the need to mention the unnecessary addition of Elle’s father’s new girlfriend. No one talked to Elle about it throughout the movie, besides Chloe in the few scenes she was in. Elle was clearly upset and not handling this new relationship well, but her dad—instead of talking it out with her—got angry and lashed out. Eventually, though, all family drama was put aside, and Elle started to become friends with her dad’s girlfriend. 

Overall, The Kissing Booth 3 had a lot of unnecessary drama and was a chaotic close to the series. While it had a lot of information in it, and the plot might have had potential, it was too poorly executed to be enjoyable.