Review: Love, Simon

Love, Simon (2018) - Greg Berlanti

         I've had some conversations lately about the state of gay representation in popular culture. My roommate (who I swear exists) is sick of how most movies or TV shows about gay people are either completely kitschy and campy or super dire. And it's true, even a movie like Call Me By Your Name, which is a fantastic, thoughtful, and important movie, is about a torrid, underage love affair. There is a complete nadir or normal love stories involving gay people. Which, in 2018, is pretty much ridiculous. There's still this stigma about it and pop culture, while massively useful, still isn't representing this humongous group of people the way it should. Which is part of the reason Love, Simon works so fucking well. 20 years ago this could have been a completely serviceable hetero normative She's All That-esque high school romance flick, but in today it finally serves to show that gay people can have a normal love story too, and I really loved it.

       Nick Robinson stars as Simon, a totally normal teenager. I know this because the movie makes a point of telling us just how normal everything in his life is (note: It is not normal to have a house that big, a room that dope, and parents who look like Jennifer Garner and Josh Duhamel, that's not normal at all). He hangs with his friends, does theatre, drinks too much iced coffee, and aimlessly drives around in his shitty car (okay that part does sound just like high school to me). But Simon's been keeping his homosexuality from everyone a secret, and it's clearly starting to get to him. Well one day on Creeksecrets.com (I graduated from high school about a million years ago so I can't be sure, but is it normal for a high school to have a salacious gossip blog in 2018? I'd accept answers in the comments, but if anyone reading these reviews is still in high school I'm going to pour gasoline on my laptop and the internet and burn it all down) a student writes an anonymous letter telling everyone he's gay and not ready to come out yet. From there Simon starts a pen pal relationship with the original post writer, Blue, as Simon calls him, while also trying to figure out who he might really be in the high school.

       This is a good movie. This movie's absolute best quality is that its sweet. It takes (almost every, I'll get to that soon) each character seriously and doesn't make light of the things happening to them, even though they're only in high school. The movie very successfully gives us the weight of high school problems, dating, first love, lying, rumours, popularity, but also never makes it obtuse or overwrought. This movie is certainly a drama (and a romance, and also a comedy), but it never feels too dramatic for the sake of drama, and that's unbelievably refreshing. Even without it knocking over the head with dire EMOTIONS, I still basically cried the entire second half of the movie. It was just very, very sweet.
       One of the best things about this movie is that it doesn't have to be a "gay" movie to function well. The main character could easily be a girl (or the mystery blogger a girl) and the movie wouldn't really change much at all. Of course it shouldn't do that, the fact that its about a kid trying to come to terms with himself is one of the crutches of the whole movie, I just want to point out that a love story can still just be a love story, the idea that it's between two males doesn't need to be shocking or different. Our expectations of seeing homosexual relationships on screen is what has been different, so I'm glad the movie doesn't let itself veer off path too much from being just a romantic teenage movie as well as a really strong story about accepting yourself.

       Which is the other best part of the movie: Simon's struggle to come out and be true to himself in front of his friends and families. It's another way the movie is very smart; for Simon his biggest concern is people seeing him differently after he comes out, which, while not everyone who sees this movie will be a gay person who's had to come out, I think everyone can relate to being afraid people aren't going to like you once they find out who you really are. The reason this movie works so well (and why I cried so goddamn much) is because it's smart enough to find relatability in every story line, regardless who's the emotional center of it.
       There's one story line in the movie involving an annoying classmate and blackmail that honestly, in my opinion, goes on way too long. They try to make it a normal part of the story, but honestly the fact that a high-schooler is blackmailing a gay student into helping him or threatening to out him is so morally reprehensible, and there's so little consequence for all of it, that it just becomes kind of angering. And it causes Simon to act like a total dick, lying all around town and whatnot. It's understandable, and Simon eventually does have to face the music, but the kid who actually outed someone doesn't? It's narratively frustrating, especially because this is mostly a movie about nice kids being nice. It doesn't quite fit, but it doesn't ruin it or anything either.

       The end of the movie even has a big spectacle scene where people watch and cheer Simon on as he hopefully finds love with Blue. I hate movies that end in public spectacle, I hate them so much, but even Love, Simon found a way to make the end surprising, exciting, and of course, so goddamn sweet and endearing that I didn't even mind when everyone in the movie and everyone in the movie theatre started fucking clapping at the climax. It had definitely earned it. Love, Simon earns all the laughs and tears it mustered, and I hope more Hollywood movies like this continue to be made and released. It can only lead to good things.

7 out of 10 Different Times I Cried During This Movie