Love Simon

Simon Spier has a fairly perfect life, or so it seems. His family comfortably lives upper-middle class lives with a gorgeous home. His young sister makes breakfast practically every morning, and whether it tastes good or not, Simon and his parents are so supportive and cheer her on. He's "just like you", but with a "huge-ass secret": he's gay. Dreaming of Daniel Radcliffe for a few nights and realizing that he wasn't into girls after a few awkward dates, he has come out to himself but not to others. In many respects, he cannot be blamed. There is only one out student at his school, and this student is constantly mocked. It is not uncommon for Simon to hear jokes from his dad poking fun at "fruity" people. He listens to a lot of friends and their "gaydar", and yet they appear pretty oblivious about him.

Love, Simon, directed by Greg Berlanti and based on the novel Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli, is being hailed as the first gay teen comedy released by a major studio. Love, Simon has all the familiar elements of a teen comedy -- first love, coming of age, discovering one's identity -- and yet in some respects it does them better. But it is remarkable that moviegoers have had to wait this long for one featuring a gay teen. Fortunately, it's a (mostly) good one.

Simon doesn't exactly know how to be gay. He Googles how gay men dress, and when he finally comes out to a female friend, she tries to elicit from him which guys he's attracted to, and yet he struggles to find the right words. When confronted by an enemy about his orientation, he can't even say the word "gay". So what's clear is that he's not ready to out himself, and he's certainly doesn't want to be outed on someone else's terms. Even in 2018, despite all the progress that has been made, it can still be difficult for queer people, especially young ones, to come out of the closet.

Simon, played by Nick Robinson, reads an anonymous post online from someone at his school who is also in the closet. Calling him Blue, he begins a pen-pal writing relationship with this person. (Simon takes the name Jacques.) The two share similar experiences, but don't reveal their identities. Who is Blue? Simon begins to guess. At first, he thinks it's a classmate named Bram (Keiynan Lonsdale), then he thinks it's the waiter at the local Waffle House whom he flirts with. Then he thinks it's another guy, and soon he really starts to feel frustrated. But those are pretty low stakes. What really turns Simon's world upside down is that he forgot to log out of his Gmail account at the school library, and another student, Martin (Logan Miller), hops on the computer, finds the correspondences, and starts to use them to blackmail Simon. (Teenagers can be cruel, but not this cruel, right?) Martin really wants to date a friend of Simon's named Abby (Alexandra Shipp), a new girl at the school. Abby is not interested in Martin, but this will not stop him from applying desperate and cruel measures to get there. Simon feels he has no choice but to comply. Despite his friend Nick (Jorge Lendeborg, Jr.) having feelings for Abby, Simon tries to sabotage that by hooking him up with Simon's best friend, Leah (Katherine Langford). This will theoretically help Martin get with Abby. Things start to get very complicated.

The screenplay by Isaac Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger is decent, although the dialogue is often painfully annoying; no family talks to each other like that, with plans of a TV night. The movie is John Hughes in tone, but not in script. Principals and vice principals can be annoying (to students and teachers both), but none act as ridiculously as the one played by Tony Hale, who turns the character into the Jar Jar Binks of teen comedies, and it's a Razzie-worthy performance. No educator would talk to their students about Tinder dates. He literally ruins scenes.

There is so much to like in Love, Simon, and yet there is also so much to hate. I really, really enjoyed Simon's journey and his story, but a lot of other parts genuinely hurt this movie. Mainly the adults, who overact and have stupid moment after stupid moment, particularly the vice principal and the drama teacher. This, plus the jokes which frequently fall flat, is what prevents Love, Simon from being a great film. That being said, the one veteran actor who is a joy to watch is Jennifer Garner as Simon's mother. She has warmth, empathy, and humanity in her that reminded me a lot of her performance in Juno from a decade ago.

Most of the movie is adequate. There's a clever sequence in which Simon images what it would be like if situations were reversed, if straight kids were the ones who would have "a secret" and would have to come out to their parents. And Love, Simon genuinely gets better as it goes, with a few powerful scenes sprinkled around in the final half-hour.

This movie channels all the mixed feelings many will have about their high school days (hopefully more of the good than the bad), and beyond that, I think it's not an exaggeration to say that this movie could change lives. Robinson's young brother came out while he was making this movie, as did Lonsdale at the cast party. If there had been a movie that championed queer youth as much as this movie does, perhaps more would have come out in previous decades.

See Love, Simon. Give it some time and try to get past the shaky first third. Reflect on it. Celebrate the novelty of it, the conventionality of it, and the joy of it.