Love, Simon is Hollywood's first attempt at a wide release gay film, and going into the film I was expecting something along the lines of a gay romcom, instead I got a watered down and unrealistic portrayal of coming out and the gay experience in general, which left me wondering how many LGBT people were behind the camera, and frankly in front of it. The movie has been called a modern John Hughes-esque film, but it completely lacks the sense of humor and depth to be compared to the likes of great 80s teen movies.
Simon Spear (Nick Robinson), our protagonist has an admittedly perfect life, and just happens to be gay, which he has kept a secret his whole life, and no one, including his doting liberal family or open-minded friends he's known since childhood have suspected anything at all. Right there I felt I was being asked to suspend my disbelief just a little bit too far, I would guess that a family like Simon's, especially his mother who is seen making a sign that says down with the heteropatriarchy would have at least had a talk with her kids once or twice about homosexuality and how she wouldn't love her children any less if they happened to be gay. Simon's friend group consists of Leah (Katherine Langford), Ally (Alexandra Shipp), and painfully underdeveloped Nick (Jorge Lendeborg Jr.) who is defined by little else than his love of soccer. The gang is introduced when Simon picks them each up from school, but the groups interaction reads as contrived and unnatural, and I kept thinking that I was watching an advertisement instead of a teen movie. My next issue with Love, Simon is exemplified by the high school itself.
We meet Ethan (Clark Moore) the only out gay at Simon's school who is black, gay and feminine, and plays a relatively insignificant role in the film overall. The way they portray Ethan's coming out is that it was easy and almost unnecessary due to his stereotypical traits, which is borderline insulting and again undermines the coming out process of gender non-conforming queer people, which the movie would seemingly prefer not to dwell on in favor of their white, upper middle-class and "normal" straight acting protagonist. The teachers at Simon's school are all over the top and out of place in a movie that aims for a semi-realistic portrayal of the gay experience. Both the vice principal and theatre teacher seem like they belong in a surreal teen sitcom with their antics and behaviors, most of which fell flat.
The last act of the movie is when I basically checked out. Simon's coming out is involuntary, and he has no control of it, which makes it less satisfying when he tells his family, because it's already a forgone conclusion that they'll find out. Seemingly, Simon's entire school, including friend group have turned against him after his outing for various reasons and he manages to change their minds by posting a message on a popular school gossip site, which is used by every student in the school, or so they would like you to believe, and the finale scene on the ferries wheel must have taken place in a completely alternate universe because there's no way a big school like Simon's would care so much about two gay people meeting up in public. The movie gives us one gay kiss at the end, which is probably ten less than the average romcom or teen comedy, but because it's a gay movie they can probably only get away with one and still keep it PG-13. The whole movie just felt artificial and staged, as well as contrived, as none of the events that force Simon to come out of the closet ring true whatsoever. Overall, I think this movie is a step in the right direction, but definitely not one of the better LGBT movies of the last few years.
The best scenes include a montage of straight kids coming out to their parents, and Keiynan Lonsdale's performance.
Other gripes: The timeline of the movie is wonky, it starts at the beginning of the school year and goes into the end where graduation is now approaching, but this makes many events in the movie nonsensical. Why did Simon's dad (Josh Duhamel) spend seven months working on an anniversary video for his wife? Why did the school spend most of the year preparing for one show? The timeline takes some of the intensity out of Simon's pen pal relationship with Blue, which would've been much more intense if it took place over the course of a month or so. Also, the scene where Simon is fantasizing about being gay and in college is borderline homophobic and is there basically to show the audience that Simon is gay, but not that gay, a message that is insulting to the gay rights movement and everyone who fought to make movies like this possible.
