Nick Robinson stars in “Love, Simon” as Simon Spier, a teenage boy who loves his life but struggles to share one significant detail about himself: his sexuality. Credit:@WEEKENDUPDATE
On March 16, the newest hit teenage movie entered theaters: “Love, Simon.” “Love, Simon” is a coming of age teenage romantic comedy and holds the title of being the first major studio film to focus on an LGBT teenage romance.
“Love, Simon” follows Simon Spier, a popular student with good friends, a supportive family and a generally happy life. However, he has just one secret that he holds away from everyone he knows: he’s in the closet. Even his best and closest friends Nick, Leah and Abby don’t know his secret. This all changes when a student from Simon’s high school posts an anonymous message on the schools “Creekwood Rumors” website about his own plight as a closeted gay student. This message prompts Simon to message the student, who is using the name “Blue,” to find out more about him and his story. In the process of messaging and communicating with Blue, Simon falls in love, and both of their secrets come into jeopardy. Simon needs to protect his secret, while also trying to solve the mystery of who Blue is.
“Love, Simon” is based on the novel “Simon vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda” by Becky Albertalli. The novel released in 2015 to rave reviews and several awards, such as the “William C. Morris Award” for best young adult literature. The novel was quickly picked up by 20th Century Fox to be adapted into a movie. The film itself is a very faithful adaptation of the book, with nearly every story thread seen in the movie and with every character mostly adapted perfectly.
The biggest things that “Love, Simon” does correctly is the dialogue and acting. In many of these teenage movies, it feels so obvious that the characters were written by adults trying to pretend to be high schoolers, the dialogue is stilted and dated. However, in “Love, Simon” the characters feel like they can be anyone on campus or anyone students we may know. The things the characters say make sense and have weight. It never feels like they’re just reading a script, but instead, they’re saying what they are feeling.
Nick Robinson as Simon will be remembered as one of his best roles and possibly a breakout role for him to become a major actor, and the way that he plays the character is astounding. You never feel bad for Simon. Instead, you relate to him as he is going through his storyline. Even if one is not LGBT or a teenager, it is easy to relate to Simon’s plight if one has ever had a secret or a crush. Simon is never ashamed of being gay, either. He knows his family would accept him and that his friends wouldn’t care. But even then, he is just afraid of it. This fear makes Simon very relatable.
In any good coming-of-age film and even any good movie, the writing should be almost cyclical. The movie should start with how the characters are and how they live their lives. Then after the adventure and events of the story, the movie should end with how the characters’ lives changed. “Love, Simon” is a perfect example of this, with one of the first scenes being him picking all his friends up for school, and then the final scene is a mirror of the first, but with a few changes. This type of writing is very satisfying for the viewer and leads to it feeling like the viewers went on this journey with the characters.
“Love, Simon” also has perfected the art of the supporting character. Even though Simon is the main character, all his friends and family are just as likable. His group of friends is well fleshed out, with goals and personalities all to themselves. Simon’s parents should win an award for most wholesome couple and parents in film history. Even Simon’s little sister, who had much of her side story from the novel cut from the film, still gets her time to shine in a few scenes where she is very real. Even tertiary characters in only a few scenes can steal the show, such as Simon’s drama instructor.
The movie is extremely confident in its writing. Many teenage romance movies feel the need to have giant, dramatic scenes and twists and turns to keep the attention of its core demographic; however,”Love, Simon” doesn’t need any of that to keep the audience engaged. The first half of the movie is simply conversations between characters, setting up friendships and connections between them. Yet, instead of the movie feeling slow, it just feels like it takes its time. It is easy to be sucked into this movie while watching it. The movie has a runtime of two hours, but in the movie theater seat, it feels like it’s only 30 minutes. It is fun to watch and genuinely can make a viewer feel happy to sit and watch it unfold.
Of course, the largest part of “Love, Simon” is the fact that Simon is gay. It is very rare for a major studio movie to feature a gay character, much less a gay character with a personality. Many LGBT characters in media are simply their sexuality, and other than that, they don’t have any characterization. As Jeremy Jahns, one of the largest YouTube movie reviewers with over a million subscribers said, “A lot of times in movies if there is a gay character, their entire character is that they are gay. That’s not a deep character; people are more than their sexual preference or sexuality. This movie, better than most, properly illustrates that.”
The jokes in “Love, Simon” land well, with the theater being full of laughs at a very good number of the jokes. The drama teacher has some of the funniest lines from this year, and “Love, Simon” isn’t even necessarily a comedy. One possible complaint about the movie is that some of the jokes go a little bit too far, with there being a large amount of very awkward cringe-type humor. These scenes can sometimes go from being funny to making the viewers feel embarrassed for a certain character.
“Love, Simon” is being received very well by critics and fans alike. The film holds a 91 percent on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, and a 73 percent on Metacritic based on reviews from 36 professional movie critics. This positive reception is very important, as it can lead to more studios taking risks and making movies with LGBT leads. The best comparison to this is 2016’s “Deadpool.” Before “Deadpool,” studios were afraid to make R-rated superhero movies out of the fear that it would hurt their bottom line. However, since the success of “Deadpool,” studios have made more R-rated superhero movies and TV shows. It can only be hoped that something similar happens here with “Love, Simon.” The success of “Love, Simon” can help lead to the normalization of LGBT in the United States.
In conclusion, not only is “Love, Simon” very, very good as a simple coming-of-age story about some teenagers, but it is also an extremely important movie right now. If social media is to be believed, the film is inspiring many people, both young and old, to come out of the closet to their friends and families. Not only this, but “Love, Simon” can pave the way for LGBT characters, stories, and entire films in the future.
