Love, Simon (2018)

Film: Love, Simon (2018)
Stars: Nick Robinson, Josh Duhamel, Jennifer Garner, Katherine Langford, Alexandra Shipp, Jorge Lendeberg, Jr., Logan Miller
Director: Greg Berlanti
Oscar History: Not going to happen
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Me at 17 would have adored Love, Simon.  Like, it would have probably become my favorite movie. and still sit toward the top of my favorite movies list defying all logic or matured taste (right now that's Sleepless in Seattle & Jurassic Park, for the record).  And that is perhaps the coolest thing I can think when I was watching the movie today, on a particularly quiet St. Patrick's Day weekend.  When I was a lad, we didn't have movies like Love, Simon, and I had to project on people like Will Truman, a decade or so older than me, cause that was all the LGBT representation I could get access toward, and I love, love, love that we live in a world where Love, Simon exists, and where little queer guys like I once was will smile and have pictures of Nick Robinson hidden underneath their pillows, dreaming of finding their Blue or Simon.  It is so cool that this movie now exists, and I wanted to start there.

(Spoilers Ahead) But I am no longer 17, and I'm also not one of those people who automatically signs up for the same film that instantly fawns over something just because it's popular or because it makes me be like "OMG-that was me."  Because there are indeed things about Love, Simon I found freakishly relatable (not least of which is I also started an online correspondence with a guy online when I was coming out who helped me and supported me through this decision...though in my case that was a catfish & really a story for another day).  I remember the abject fear of someone potentially going to out you, and being willing to do things that hurt those around you to keep your secret safe.  But Love, Simon is the sort of the movie that wouldn't function without the fact that its main character was gay, and part of me wonders if that's enough to justify a film existing.

The film is so rife with cliches that it barely requires you to cover its plot.  The film follows Simon (Robinson), an absurdly handsome young man who lives in an upper-middle class home at a school that is both shockingly diverse, well-funded, and somehow both progressive/regressive at the same time.  He has two parents (Garner & Duhamel) who are plucked out of an Eddie Bauer catalog, and are woke (but still intensely suburban) to the point where you almost have to laugh at the way that Berlanti wants to make sure that this is relatable to straight audiences.  The film unfolds with a relatively compelling mystery at its center, with us trying to figure out who the mysterious Blue is (though if you're paying attention you'll get it right), and occasionally goes to uncomfortable places (I cringed over every aspect of Logan Miller's Martin, who was the worst kind of villain that I ended up loathing ferociously in a way I suspect most straight audiences won't get but gay audiences will nod in agreement over), but by-and-large this is a cookie-cutter film in the vein of Pretty Pink and Easy A (the latter it even borrows camera angles & editing techniques from).

But the movie itself is only as good as you want it to be because you want to celebrate that it exists at all.  I loathe when LGBT audiences complain about something not "representing them" (it's why Looking got cancelled!), but that shouldn't be confused with praising every LGBT film that comes along or pretending it doesn't have any faults.  The movie's plot is thin, its side characters are two-dimensional.  That doesn't mean they aren't fun (Josh Duhamel thinking that Grindr was "gay Facebook" was easily the movie's best joke), but it's absurd-no one has a coming out experience that good with their parents, where their mom is a psychologist and their dad is both a he-man AND intensely sensitive.  It's like watching a world you wish your coming out experience had been like, and other than Robinson's Simon, there's no growth here.  When his best friend reveals she had a crush on Simon, it's hard to, well care, and it feels like Berlanti is hoping that the (likely gay or straight female) audiences will remember the time they were growing up and how they had a crush on a gay guy (or were the gay guy getting crushed on).  I don't subscribe to that, particularly when you can spot other coming-of-age films like Perks of Being a Wallflower or Wonder in recent years and see the complicated side characters they interject into traditionally-formed narratives.  And since I have to get it out, I will say that it's disappointing that the main male character isn't played by an openly gay actor considering this film's historic place in film history.  I don't want to quibble with Robinson's performance (he's good in the movie), and I'm normally not averse to straight people playing gay characters, but considering this is the first really, traditionally commercial play for a film like this, it's sad that gay kids won't get a real-life gay actor to go with their treasured Simon.  Young girls, after all, got Gal Gadot AND Wonder Woman, while young African-American teenagers got Chadwick Boseman to go along with Black Panther.  It's a pity that gay kids don't get a real-life matinee idol to go with the character that they're clearly going to adore.

Because for all of my complaints-I need to get to the fact here: I really liked Love, Simon.  It's impossible not to like it, quite frankly.  The film is so empowering and lovely and warm, with moments that will make you cry whether you're gay or straight, that I really hope people see it.  I'll definitely buy it the second it comes out, and thanks to MoviePass I might even sneak to see it in a theater once more.  I frequently find myself having an eye-roll moment when someone says you liked a movie "just because it's about gay people," but maybe there's some truth to that here.  This movie would be impossibly generic (to the point where it wouldn't even have gotten greenlit), if it was about straight people, and it would have been nice if there was almost anything queer about the film (perhaps Berlanti's only nod to such complaints was his side character of Ethan, a character "too gay" to be our lead hero and someone whose story I'd love to hear more of), but it's a fun movie.  It's fluffy and occasionally bordering on the manipulative, but I didn't care.  I was in the mood for it, and I understand that there are going to be people who don't know this story by heart from being raised on John Hughes, and as a result that's really beautiful that their first introduction to such a world will be through a gay kid named Simon.  So I'm going with 4 stars not because this is treading new ground, but because even I am not immune to guilty pleasures.  So see it, bring your parents, and try to look past Berlanti's crush on making everything straight-friendly and inclusive, because Love, Simon is going to be special to a generation of young people in a way I might be too old to match, but that I can surely appreciate.