Saturday, April 7, 2018

Love, Simon (2018, PG-13)

I actually saw this film on its opening weekend, but it took me a while to get around to writing a review for it – been busy.  However, don’t take that as a lack of enthusiasm for or enjoyment of the movie.  On the contrary, this is a well-made, conventional teen rom-com, which in the case of this film, is most certainly a great thing!  (A few premise spoilers.)

Simon’s ordinary life of high school, friends, and hanging out is thrown for a loop when he catches wind of a closeted gay kid at his school, known only by the online handle Blue.  Unbeknownst to anyone in his life, Simon is in exactly the same situation, and he strikes up an anonymous email correspondence with Blue.  Over the course of their emails, Simon opens up to another person about himself for the first time and also begins to fall hard for his mystery kindred spirit.  However, his privacy, sense of social safety, and burdgeoning friendship/maybe-more with Blue are all put in jeopardy when a classmate discovers Simon’s emails and threatens to out him if Simon won’t help the guy get with one of Simon’s female friends.

I really, really enjoyed this movie.  Just generally, it’s a strong film with good comedy, sweet potential romance, and some compelling drama mixed in.  The movie does a nice job with the ongoing mystery of Blue’s identity – I like the recurring device of Simon imagining him as different people as Simon makes his way from one possible-Blue to the next.  All the actors are turning in fine work – Nick Robinson is excellent as Simon, as are Jennifer Garner and Josh Duhamel, who feel very genuine as his parents.  Also, special shoutout to a pair of grown-up scene-stealers in the school scenes, Tony Hale as the trying-too-hard (vice?) principal and Natasha Rothwell as the where-did-my-life-go-wrong? drama teacher.  The movie additionally features Keiynan Lonsdale (lately Kid Flash, but I remember him as Uriah from the Divergent films) and Alexandra Shipp, the new Storm in X-Men.

It’s quite polished, and a good portion of the plot covers very well-trodden teen rom-com fare, which, as I said, is a definite note in its favor.  That might feel weird to say, and ordinarily, I wouldn’t be so eager for such conventional beats and tropes.  But because this teen rom-com is about an all-American gay boy, I welcome how ordinary it feels.  Certainly, Simon is deeply closeted and takes the threat of outing very seriously – I don’t mean that the movie doesn’t mine drama from his sexuality.  What I mean is that this really is a true teen rom-com – almost an old-fashioned one, with hints of a John Hughes feel to it – and Simon’s feelings for Blue get the full treatment as such.  This isn’t a tragic LGBTQ story that ends in suicide, gay-bashing, or a loving couple kept apart for mournful reasons.  This is a very Hollywood romantic comedy, with a little added drama, and I like that LGBTQ cinema has a mainstream movie like this for queer kids to watch and root for.  (On that note, it’s positively adorable to watch Simon interact with his various suspected Blues.  The moment he starts to think he might have figured it out, he goes totally smitten and suffers a complete loss of game – so sweet.)

And on a personal level, the film just really resonates with me.  As an aromantic asexual, I can’t relate to Simon’s longing to be with the boy he likes without harassment, but I absolutely know how it feels to be closeted.  I remember the paranoia of being discovered, that utter fight-or-flight response – it just kills me when he’s first confronted with his secret, and he can’t even bring himself to say the word “gay.”  And I know the enormity of coming out to my family, how, even as I reassured myself that they would still love me, I was all but paralyzed by fear because I couldn’t know for sure until I did it and the stakes were just.  So.  High.  I fully admit to crying in the theater over moments that hit home so closely.

Warnings

Thematic elements, sexual references, swearing, and drinking.

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