Love, Simon is a breath of fresh air in so many ways. It’s the first major studio film that stars a gay protagonist, its impeccably cast with three queer actors, and perhaps most importantly, is a wonderful film that manages to improve on it’s source material, Simon v. the Homosapien Agenda.
The story is about Simon (Nick Robinson), an average kid with loving parents (Josh Duhamel and Jennifer Garner), a sister he likes, great friends (Katherine Langford, Jorge Lendeborg Jr., Alexandra Shipp) and one huge secret, he’s gay. He finds solace in an online correspondence with Blue, another gay kid at his school, whom he begins falling in love with. Unfortunately, Martin, a kid at his school, sees these messages and uses it to blackmail him. Not much more needed to get into the plot but suffice to say there’s high school hijinks, coming outs, and lots of drama, on the way to a happy ending.
Love, Simon is what I would call a cute movie. It doesn’t do much to rock the boat but isn’t too saccharine (though at moments you think it might be). Nick Robinson was a really great Simon, capably showing off the many facets of the character. The greatest thing he could do was to play Simon as Simon, not every gay character or a stereotype. We get to see him be messy, put together, a kid, dealing with grown up things, openly gay and closeted, and he did. He is matched in his earnest, well worn performance by a great bunch of supporting actors. I hesitate to single out people because they’re all so wonderful but I was most affected by Jennifer Garner, who does some of her best acting in being present in scenes and then get a monologue that matches the tone of the one Michale Sthulbarg dazzled us with in Call Me By Your Name. I was also really taken with Jorge Lendeborg Jr., who is like the straight version of Simon, all nervous energy and desire to be in love. He sold the movie’s funniest lowkey joke with ease.
What I appreciated about this movie the most was that it turned what could have doomed another movie, the email correspondence, and turned it into something visually great. It was awesome to see how the folks Simon suspected as being Blue take the place of the anonymous man typing at his computer and that we see them reenact bits of the emails. It’s a simple but brilliant stroke of filmmaking one that allows us to play along with Simon while also giving us some unique visuals.
The only thing I think that’s missing from Love, Simon is a little more mess, a little more fraying around the edges. This is a slickly made film and I appreciated how director Greg Berlanti gets out of the way of the story but it deserved a little less polish. You never get a true sense of place (the movie takes place in the Atlanta suburbs) and that could have added another layer of conflict to the story. Sometimes it felt like the movie was bringing things up and then moving on because this is what a Hollywood film does. However, this does not stop the movie from being an enjoyable moving experience.