A Gay Teen Romance, Sealed With A Peck: 'Love, Simon'
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"I'm just like you," says gay 17-year-old Simon Spier (straight 22-year-old Nick Robinson), by way of introduction. We assume, at first, that he's just getting his Ferris Bueller on and introducing himself to the audience, but it turns out he's instead replying, via pseudonymous e-mail account, to an anonymous blog post written by one of his schoolmates. A correspondence ensues between their respective, most secret selves, as both Simon and the young man he calls "Blue" are still in the closet. Their sweet, sincere e-mail exchange, full of nervous confessions, mutual support and music playlists, makes up the epistolary backbone of Love, Simon, a mainstream gay high-school romance that's causing some people — both within and without the 20th Century Fox PR department — to call it "groundbreaking."
It is that, in a way, so long as we're careful to get specific about just which patch of cinematic ground is truly getting excavated, here. Certainly, high-school romances have been piling up for decades now. In recent years, we've amassed a much smaller but not inconsiderate amount of gay high-school movies, from the broad (1999's But I'm A Cheerleader), to the raunchy (2006's Another Gay Movie), to those that plant their feet in just-be-true-to-yourself uplift (2006's The Curiosity of Chance; this year's Freak Show).
It's also worth noting that there have been more than a few swoony gay high-school romances — though admittedly these tend to get imported from places like Great Britain (1996's Beautiful Thing) and Brazil (2016's The Way He Looks).
If Love, Simon is a mainstream gay high-school romance (and it is) then clearly the word that's doing the real groundbreaking work — the one that's truly operating the jackhammer — isn't romance, or high-school, or even gay; it's mainstream.
Those previous films focusing on the romantic/sexual travails and triumphs of queer kids were scrappy independent/international productions, and whatever public reception they got was fueled by film festival buzz, a handful of reviews and word of mouth. Love, Simon is a major studio release, backed by the full might and majesty of 20th Century Fox's marketing and promotional departments. It has been ruthlessly engineered, its every rough edge rock-tumbled to a polished, smooth perfection, so as to better sail over the nation's art-houses and land squarely in the American multiplex.
Teams of professionals have ergonomically designed it for mass consumption. Everything about it is charming and palatable, cute and inoffensive. It is a gay coming-out story set squarely in a world of upscale suburban homes, where parents who buy their kids Subarus — complete with the giant hood-ribbon you only see in car commercials — can be counted upon to be tearfully understanding, when the time comes. It's a world where bullying happens, when it happens, in a strangely feckless manner that gets swiftly and permanently dealt with by concerned, acutely observant teachers.
In other words, it's pure fantasy.
In other other words, it's a mainstream high-school romance, just exactly like the scores of mainstream high-school romances that have come before.
Consider: In Love, Simon, our hero and his friends mouth dialogue that vacillates between Buffy-clever and Disney Channel-twee. [Check!] A blackmail scheme drives the plot [Check!], forcing Simon to ally himself with a character we're meant to find both repellent and endearing (which: yep to the former, nope to the latter). [Check!] There is a my-parents-are-away house party. [Check!] Over the course of the film, love triangles and least one love rhombus bloom [Check! Check!], none of which seem particularly convincing. [Check!] The climactic kiss is neither sensual nor erotic — it's a peck, a place-holder, just another rom-com box to be dutifully [Check!]ed.
And yet.
If that's the task the film sets for itself, why begrudge its efficiency at achieving it? Yes, Love, Simon does everything it can do to parboil the flavor, color, consistency and fabulousness out of its queer romance, until all that's left is the familiar beige, featureless pap of overcooked heterosexual teen rom-coms. But that's ... kind of the point. Why shouldn't queer kids get the chance to see generic, mass-produced versions of themselves onscreen, overcoming minor obstacles on their path to True Love(tm)?
They absolutely should, and with Love, Simon (and the films that will certainly follow it) they will.
But while they're watching it, they — and the friends and family members they bring along with them — will get to see something else. Something about which the film, gratifyingly, is much more specific, and thoughtful and acutely detailed. Because while the romance elements of Love, Simon will earn it headlines and, perhaps more importantly, butts-in-seats, it's the film's quieter, deeper coming-out storyline that forms its true emotional center.
It's here where the unquestioned privilege of the film's main character becomes a feature, not a bug. He doesn't remain in the closet out of fear of being rejected by family and friends, or because it would place him at physical, social or financial risk. No, he resists confessing his sexuality because to do so would mean his perfect suburban life would change. That's a small, smart, sharply observed detail. Screenwriters Elizabeth Berger and Isaac Aptaker (and Becky Albertalli, who wrote the 2015 YA novel on which the film is based) have clearly done their homework; they know that the closet is not just a lonely and secretive place, but in cases like Simon's, it's a toxically selfish one too.
When he does decide to crack the closet door, those scenes play out with an unforced immediacy and realness; the vaguely diffident quality Robinson brings to Simon charges those looooong silences, enriches them. Anyone who's been on either side of that particular conversation will likely find themselves involuntarily holding their breath.
Love, Simon can do some good in the world, and it likely will — but perhaps not the precise kind of good it thinks it will. The audience at my pre-release screening dependably oohed and aahed as the film churned through its various romantic feints and reveals. But the moment that a character finally spoke the words "I'm gay," they did more than murmur.
They cheered.
CLOSE Simon Spier's love story is a little complicated because he hasn't told his family or friends that he's gay in "Love, Simon." USA TODAY
Simon (Nick Robinson, left) keeps his sexuality a secret from his best friend, Leah (Katherine Langford), in "Love, Simon." (Photo: BEN ROTHSTEIN)
Young and old, jocks and nerds, geeks and freaks and everyone in between should be able to find something to adore in Love, Simon.
Director Greg Berlanti’s coming-of-age tale about a closeted Atlanta high schooler is the first teen film from a major studio about a gay romance, and Love, Simon (★★★1/2; rated PG-13; in theaters nationwide Friday) is not only historically significant but also truly excellent. Like 2016's The Edge of Seventeen, the movie honors and even upends familiar tropes that have been around since the John Hughes era, and wonderfully captures the hilarity and heartbreak of that universal transition from childhood through the travails of a kid weighed down by one whopper of a secret.
In the adaptation of Becky Albertalli’s novel Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda, Simon Spier (Nick Robinson) is a 17-year-old senior counting down the days to graduation with daily iced coffees and Waffle House hangouts with friends. However, while his dad, Jack (Josh Duhamel), thinks he’s ogling pictures of Gigi Hadid in lingerie, Simon is instead checking out the hunky guy leaf-blowing next door. Wrestling with his homosexuality, Simon reads a post on his school’s underground gossip blog in which a classmate with the pen name “Blue” comes out. Feeling a kinship, Simon emails him using the handle “Jacques.”
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Simon maintains the illusion of being straight to his friends, including insecure best pal Leah (Katherine Langford), soccer star Nick (Jorge Lendeborg Jr.) and everybody’s new crush, Abby (Alexandra Shipp), but on the down low fosters a close cyber relationship with Blue. As if Simon wasn’t already stressed out, annoying theater kid Martin (Logan Miller) finds and makes screenshots of the email correspondence, threatening to out Simon to the entire school if he doesn’t help him woo Abby.
Simon (Nick Robinson, left) enjoys family time with sister Nora (Talitha Bateman), mom Emily (Jennifer Garner) and dad Jack (Josh Duhamel) in "Love, Simon." (Photo: BEN ROTHSTEIN)
Robinson (Everything, Everything) is Love, Simon’s emotional rock — he navigates excitement, happiness, sadness, guilt and anger equally well, and Langford and Shipp lend strong complementary performances. Tony Hale (as the painfully uncool vice principal) and Natasha Rothwell (as the bitter theater teacher) add to the film’s comedic bite, and Duhamel and Jennifer Garner (playing Simon’s mom) are responsible for a lot of warmth once Simon’s complicated juggling of his personal life hits home.
Berlanti, who also directed 2010’s Life as We Know It, is best known as the TV guru behind CW’s popular superhero shows such as Arrow and The Flash, as well as Riverdale, and the racially and sexually diverse casts of characters that inhabit them. As a gay filmmaker, he’s brought an idyllic authenticity to Love, Simon, where a boy coming out is a normal yet dramatically heightened part of the teen-movie experience, just like picking the right person in your love triangle or finding love before the big dance.
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Elizabeth Berger and Isaac Aptaker’s screenplay offers a wide variety of personalities, even antagonists, that are all treated with a realness and respect. Like in those old-school teen classics The Breakfast Club and Pretty in Pink, audiences will see themselves in these characters, and even if you’re long past the days of homework and pep rallies, Love, Simon will bring all those complicated questions and feelings of identity back again. (It also, like its '80s predecessors, offers a pretty great soundtrack, featuring Bleachers, the Jackson 5 and Whitney Houston.)
Berlanti's film fits right in with the representation of Black Panther and the Time's Up movement, a timely project that needs to be seen and will jerk tears along the way. But it’s also an inspiring and humorous delight, with as satisfying an ending as a Judd Nelson fist in the air.
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It really does get better — at the movies anyway.
“Love, Simon,” a new comedy about a gay high school boy coming out of the closet and finding love, is a million miles away from the heavy gay-themed films of yore. The ones where men died from AIDS (“Dallas Buyers Club”), families were ripped apart by dormant desires (“Brokeback Mountain”) or dudes faced an Everest of hate — even in comedies (“Priscilla Queen of the Desert”). Movies that left you feeling sorry for their characters.
No, this film, based on Becky Albertalli’s young adult novel “Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda,” is as sweet as a pecan pie baked by Dolly Parton. It’s a canny blend of “Degrassi” and John Hughes: “Love, Simon” is the rare, feel-good gay movie.
That’s not to say this Atlanta high school is totally drama-free. Simon (Nick Robinson) is terrified to come out to his parents (Jennifer Garner and Josh Duhamel) and friends, so he strikes up an anonymous email correspondence with another student, called Blue, who posts on a school message board that he is also gay. Yay, internet! Gradually, he begins to fall in love with his mysterious digital pen pal, and daydreams about which guy he might be.
But it’s not all heart-shaped chocolates and rose petals. The romance gets doused with ice water when an idiot classmate, Martin (Logan Miller), discovers the emails open on a library computer and uses them as blackmail material to get Simon’s help to date a close female friend of his. Boo, internet! If Martin doesn’t get the girl, the whole school finds out Simon’s secret.
At least in 2018, high school kids still behave like vicious little monsters.
Like the Broadway musical “Dear Evan Hansen,” this movie ably confronts modern high-school students’ liberating — but absolutely horrifying — relationship with tech and mobile devices. The very same school message board that allowed Simon to be honest with himself can also, as far as he’s concerned, totally ruin his life.
And because it’s a life we care deeply about, the stakes are high. That’s thanks to a perfectly sensitive performance from Robinson. Even when the 22-year-old relative newcomer is simply standing around, he seems to be teetering on the verge of sobbing. Katherine Langford (“13 Reasons Why”), as his best pal, Leah, continues her reign as the Queen of All Fictional Teenagers with a touching, Everygirl turn.
A minor quibble is the portrayal of the teachers, who are turned into weirdly inappropriate clowns by the screenwriters (Elizabeth Berger and Isaac Aptaker) and actors (Tony Hale and Natasha Rothwell). They make jokes that they 100 percent shouldn’t in class, and come across extremely and unnecessarily incompetent. The gag doesn’t get laughs.
The movie could do without its creepy educators, but the kids are all right.
"The brilliance of the marketing for 'Love, Simon' lies in its honesty and in not shying away from the fact that the film is a gay teen romantic comedy," said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for online measurement company ComScore. "While many films that have gay themes or a LGBTQ subtext often hide those elements in order to obscure the true message of the movie in order to make the film more 'commercial' or 'mainstream,' this film is rightly and innovatively celebrating and embracing its themes and point of view."
