Review: Love, Simon

“Love, Simon is one of the first truly commercial coming of age mainstream movies to focus on the romantic awakening of a gay teenager. But is it actually as good as some of the reviews would lead you to believe, or is the wave of support for the film due to its subject matter affecting the level of praised heaped upon it?”

Last year we had Wonder Woman, which soared to the top of the box office and had great critical praise. Despite its underpinning as a well overdue female-lead Superhero movie (ignoring all the previous female lead superhero movies of course) Wonder Woman’s success mainly lied in the fact that the film was exceptionally well made.

This year, we got Black Panther, which has also swept to the top of the top of the box office and was also underpinned by the fact that it was a well overdue black superhero movie. It too had a lot of its success built on being well made, although being part of the Marvel universe no doubt assisting in lifting it into the stratosphere.

Love, Simon also rides in on a wave of support due to it being a long overdue film that is a romantic-coming of age-teen comedy where the main character is gay. But taking away that (somewhat) unique aspect of the film, are we left with a good film? Yes, yes we are.

Love, Simon is the type of film you want to see more of in cinemas, but we don’t see often enough. The main characters are very well written and feel like real people. Most of the secondary characters are given enough substance to make them also believable (except for a few aspects) and the plot is constructed in a way that allows the audience to go on the journey with the character. It might not hit all the high notes, but it’s got a pretty solid range of notes.

Simon, played by Nick Robinson, is a very likeable character who goes on a journey to find his first great love story. His friend group are all well played by a group of young up and coming actors, and they’re well supported by more experienced campaigners such as Jennifer Garner and Josh Duhamel. The film employs a useful narrative device of having Simon’s love interest anonymous, but each time Simon has a theory of who it is, the person we see writing on the other end of their emails, changes to that person, only to switch again once he discovers he is wrong. This simple idea works well and keeps the story fresh throughout.

Overall, I had three issues with the film. Firstly, whilst most of the adult characters were written and performed okay, (mainly Simon’s parents) the vice principal character, played by Tony Hale is a terrible character who ruins every scene he is in. The film feels more like a serious drama with funny moments for the most part, but Hale’s character feels like he was lifted out of a low-brow teen sex comedy. It’s very disappointing that he would continually pull me out of the movie.

Second of all, Simon’s life is a little too perfect. He has great friends who go through a ritual every morning with great smiles on their faces and not a single bit of traffic in sight as Simon’s routinely pulls up at their door to car pool everyone to work. His school is squeaky clean, with the social dynamic in the school fairly bland, which kinda makes his whole big secret not quite carry as weight as it could have in a tougher environment.

Finally, the ending is far too cheesy and over the top. In a film that had held back on running too many cliché’s and presenting things in a fairly realistic way, the ending is true Hollywood sugar and is far too sweet for mature taste buds.

But overall, it’s a very enjoyable film that is worth getting along to. Enough laughs, enough seriousness and just a good character driven story.

The five bearded questions:

1. Was it worth a cinema trip? Yes

2. Would I See It Again at the Cinema? If someone wanted to see it and had invited me. Not just to see it again. 3. Would I buy it on Blu-ray: (only films I really love get bought these days) No 4. Do I Recommend people see it? Yes

5. Any cheese/ Disney style bullshit?: (such as jokes wedged in at serious moments, because fun!). A little, mostly from the vice principal and the ending was pure cheddar.