In a Nutshell

A young coming-of-age teenage boy, Simon Spier, goes through a different kind of Romeo and Juliet story. Simon has a love connection with a boy, Blue, by email, but the only problem is that Simon has no idea who he’s talking to. Simon must discover who that boy is–who Blue is. Along the way, he tries to find himself as well.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5164432/

Review

One of the most interesting and best things about Love, Simon is that it’s 20 minutes too long. Traditionally that would be a criticism but in this case, the extra 20 minutes is representative of something bigger here; it’s an acknowledgement that we’ve never seen this type of movie before. Love, Simon is that big, glossy, pop music driven John Hughes-esque coming of age story that teens have been lapping up (and trying to emulate somewhat quixotically) since the 1980s. The difference, and it’s a very important difference, is that the lead character is a gay teen coming to terms with not just growing up but acknowledging who he is.

There have been films centred on gay or lesbian teens but they’re typically independently produced and few if any have broken through into the mainstream. For instance, Call Me By Your Name had a moment on social media and made a lot of money compared to what it cost to make it but it’s worldwide total amounts to just over $35 million. I’m pretty sure the next Avengers movie will make that in a day or so. Similarly, A Fantastic Woman, featuring a trans woman in the lead role (played by a trans actor), got just under $2 million worldwide and it won an Oscar this year for best foreign film.

Much More than Just Another Coming of Age Drama

I guess the point is big studios have avoided throwing their weight behind a gay-centric coming of age movie because they perhaps felt that having a gay character lead a movie was too niche and not relatable enough to “mainstream” audiences. And whether or not you want to say “mainstream” or something else vaguely patronising – and “mainstream” is a curious term from the get-go  – Love, Simon challenges the “norm” in some funny and inventive ways and in other ways, and perhaps the most important way, it’s treated like every other teenage coming of age movie. Love, Simon is a wrecking ball that crashes into the heteronormative narrative that populates pretty much every major studio release.

The film has the surface sheen of the typical Hollywood coming of age movie – good looking, middle-class family,a good-looking lead character with good-looking friends and he has his own car! – that really most folks watching could never really recognise because it’s a super clean, super unattainable life that is largely too PG-13 to be real. But all that is really part of the wish fulfilment aspect of movies; We wish we had this type of cool school/teenage life – or least I did, I went to an all-boys Catholic school so my school life was miserable – that had awesome 80’s style pop songs soundtracking our daily commute.

Coincidentally, the soundtrack is pretty good and Jack Antonoff (Bleachers) serves as executive music producer so there’s a number of Bleachers songs shamelessly blasting away throughout the runtime. But this surface gloss is important for a movie like this. Why? Because a big Hollywood studio movie, up to this point, featuring a lead character who is gay has never had this treatment before.

You’re my boy Blue!

Love, Simon cleverly acknowledges this by almost not acknowledging it. Simon, played by a brilliant (and likely future star) Nick Robinson, is informed by a friend that someone from their high school has made an anonymous online confession that they are gay but in the closet. Going under the pseudonym “Blue”, Simon decides to reach out to him under his own pseudonym, “Jacques” because he too is gay but he doesn’t know how to come out publicly.

From here, Simon strikes up a rapport with Blue where they share intimate details about their lives and it isn’t long before Simon falls in love with this digital phantom. However, things take a dramatic turn (as they must and always do) when the slippery and creepy Martin (Logan Miller) discovers his emails to Blue. Martin decides to blackmail Simon because he has a crush on Abby (played by X-Men’s Alexandra Shipp), one of Simon’s friends, and he wants Simon to play matchmaker or else he will out him. What follows is Simon betraying not only who he is to keep his secret but he also betrays the friendships of those around him too.

This is the standard stuff that melodramatic teen movies are made of and this over the top quality (it should be said Love, Simon has some wonderfully big, laugh out loud moments) perfectly encapsulates the teenage experience where everything is big and hormonal and things that seem small looking back on them with hindsight have an end of the world type quality to them in the teenage mindset. But the crucial difference with Love, Simon is the aforementioned “20 minutes too long aspect” and also a sequence where all the main characters come out to their parents as…heterosexual.

A Film That Perfectly Encapsulates the Teenage Experience

It’s an exquisite (and deceptively simple) fantasy sequence that asks the very fair question, why should anyone have to “come out” in the first place? And it’s this part of the movie that lands hardest because you’ve been watching a film up to this point that’s relatable, funny and heartfelt and you suddenly realise that it’s crazy a movie like this hasn’t been made before.

As for that extra “20 minutes” that makes the film a little too long, it is actually necessary; the weight of what you’ve just seen needs to land that little bit more. The emphasis is on just how tough Simon’s struggle has been and how it shouldn’t have to be. Society at large has made great strides but the current heteronormality of “mainstream” TV & cinema probably hasn’t helped the many young people out there who struggle with their identity.

Director Greg Berlanti and screenwriters Isaac Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger deserve huge credit crafting a film that is as silly and over the top as it is heartfelt and serious. This film, hopefully, paves the way for films in the future to have a gay lead where that extra 20 minutes is longer needed.

Verdict

Love, Simon is a big, John Hughes-inspired, coming of age comedy drama that is quietly and brilliantly ground-breaking and should appeal to a large audience. It’s well written and directed and a step in the right direction for Hollywood when it comes to gay lead characters.