Four stars. Rated PG-13, for sexual references, mild teen misbehavior and brief profanity
By Derrick Bang
Director Greg Berlanti’s
teen-oriented charmer reminds me of how much I miss the great John Hughes
years: the decade marked by Sixteen
Candles, The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink, Some Kind of Wonderful and numerous others.
Back when movie teenagers
displayed some intelligence, chatted using words of more than one syllable, and
fell in and out of love in a manner that felt genuine.
No cheap vulgarity or offensively
exploitative nudity. And none of the terminally ill — or already dead — kids
who’ve been populating a recent sub-genre.
Indeed, Berlanti’s handling of Love, Simon feels like an engaging cross
between Gregory’s Girl — now, there’s a classic — and Hughes’ Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, albeit
reconfigured for the social media age. Elizabeth Berger and Isaac Aptaker have
delivered a marvelous adaptation of Becky Albertalli’s 2015 young adult novel, Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda; their
script is funny, poignant, shrewdly perceptive and — on several occasions —
devastatingly, hide-behind-your-hands shattering.
I wanted to sink through the
movie theater floor at least twice. Been there, imagined that. Never made
public mistakes quite so catastrophic, but hey: could have.
To cases:
Seventeen-year-old Simon Spier
(Nick Robinson) lives a perfect life, blessed with kind and progressive parents
— Josh Duhamel and Jennifer Garner, as Jack and Emily — and a doting younger
sister (Talitha Bateman, as Nora) to who he is equally devoted. The comfortably
secure family lives in a gorgeous home, complete with dog.
Simon has his own car, with which
he collects his posse each school morning, stopping en route for a coffee fix shared
with longtime BFF Leah (Katherine Langford), best guy friend Nick (Jorge
Lendeborg Jr.) and comparative newcomer Abby (Alexandra Shipp). We don’t see
much in the way of routine class work, but everybody is involved with the drama
group production of Cabaret.
This musical’s haphazardly
talented cast — drama teacher Ms. Albright (Natasha Rothwell) having been
instructed to accept all students,
regardless of thespic or singing ability — includes Martin (Logan Miller), the
socially inept class clown who always says and does the wrong thing at the
worst possible moment. Somebody to be pitied, but also somebody to be avoided.
Life couldn’t be better, right?
Well ... no, not really.
Simon is gay, which he has known
for at least four years. He has told nobody: not even Leah, who clearly loves
him in the romantic way ... a blindingly obvious detail to which Simon, wrapped
up in his own issues, remains oblivious. Nick, just as clearly, is desperately
infatuated with Abby. But she’s a hottie, whom he fears is out of his league.
On top of which, Abby seems more comfortable with Simon.
Actually, everybody seems comfortable with Simon. And why not? He’s bright,
personable, funny and quick to defend a friend or address a transgression. At
home, he’s far more adept than his parents, when it comes to praising the
sometimes inedible creations devised by Nora, who fancies herself a chef de cuisine (a cute touch, that).
And yet: His breezy insouciance
notwithstanding, Simon isn’t happy. Oh, he puts on a good show, but we can see
the uncertainty and pain behind Robinson’s cheerful façade. Even with good
friends, Simon is lonely. His bearing
is described perfectly, late in the story, when somebody notes that it seems as
if he’s been holding his breath for years.
Relief, of sorts, comes when
Simon stumbles into an online conversation with somebody known only as “Blue.”
Simon, in turn, conceals his identity behind a similar nom de email. Simon senses that Blue is gay, and also closeted;
this is confirmed over time, when both acknowledge themselves to each other.
But only online.
At which point, the question nags
at Simon: Who is Blue? Somebody at
school? Elsewhere in his life? A total stranger? This is where the Gregory’s Girl element comes in, when
Berlanti and his scripters cleverly re-shape the film each time Simon proceeds to
another logical guess.
But then: disaster. As only can
occur in this era of social media, when even the most careful participants
sometimes get careless. The correspondence with Blue is discovered by the worst
possible individual, who then applies pressure in a manner that causes Simon to
compromise his integrity, and behave far outside his comfort zone.
All because he can’t bear to have
his secret exposed ... and also because — again, this speaks to Simon’s sense
of honor — it would expose Blue.
Needless to say, none of this
would be an issue if being a gay high school kid weren’t such a big flippin’ deal.
Berlanti, Berger and Aptaker give
us a well-balanced mix of characters who are sincere and genuine — our core
group — and others who exist either to be instructive, or as comic relief. In
the latter category, Tony Hale is a hoot as Vice Principal Worth, a
glad-handing motor mouth who wants to appear cool, and with it, and to be “part
of the gang.” He’s like Martin in a way: Both try too hard, and are too obviously
needy.
Hale is a chuckle, but Rothwell’s
Ms. Albright is hilarious. She gets
all the best and funniest lines, many of them muttered sotto voce, and her facial expressions — particularly when dealing
with some of her play’s less talented participants — are equally priceless. But
— and this is important — Ms. Albright also is a force of nature who displays a
ferocious degree of righteous indignation when a situation demands.
Goodness, couldn’t we all have used a couple Ms.
Albrights, during our high school
years?
Langford nails the wary, carefully
concealed insecurity of a girl who believes herself awkward, unattractive and socially
unskilled. (None of this is true, of course, but we’re often least able to
judge ourselves.) It’s a quietly heartbreaking and beautifully shaded
performance: Leah wears her heart on her sleeve, and quietly agonizes because,
after all these years, Simon continues to miss all her signals.
Shipp’s Abby is the opposite:
bubbly, personable and fearless. Everything that Leah wishes she could be. As a
result, we detect a subtle strain in their dynamic. They’re friends because
Simon likes them both, but — given the opportunity to re-write history — we
sense that Leah might have found a way to prevent Abby from crossing their
paths.
Abby has issues as well; she
simply conceals them better from her friends ... but not from us. Shipp grants
her character a similar touch of anxiety and apprehension; she, too, has things
to hide.
Lendeborg Jr. makes Nick a
trusted — and (very important) trusting — friend and typical teen guy: the type
whom everybody assumes is smooth, but who balks at something as simple as
asking a girl for a date.
Miller nails the socially
hopeless Martin so well, it’s painfully uncomfortable. We begin to wince each
time he opens his mouth, anticipating what’s about to emerge. On top of which,
his penchant for grand gestures is terrifying.
Then there’s Ethan (Clark Moore),
the school’s “token gay,” and the butt of constant verbal abuse from a couple
of school thuglets (and boy, they
sure look and sound familiar). Ethan gives as good as he gets: Moore shades the
role with defiance and pride. But, we wonder, at what cost?
Simon’s parents are a bit too
good to be true, but Duhamel and Garner wear their roles convincingly; I
particularly enjoyed their conversational reaction after Simon returns home,
quite drunk, from a Halloween party.
Every character is crucial in
this swirling maelstrom of teen angst; Berlanti builds the story, through its
numerous acts, to a marvelous conclusion. It’s a bit “if only,” to be sure, but
hey: That’s what movies are for.
Berlanti also assembles the film
well, cleverly employing the tech antics of social media in a manner that feels
organic to the story, and isn’t merely visual “noise” on the screen (as had
become a go-to affectation by lazier filmmakers).
I’m mildly disappointed by the
fact that Berger and Aptaker turned Simon into a high school senior, as opposed
to the junior in Albertalli’s book; that seems a bit of a cop-out intended to
make his sexual orientation more palatable. And I continue to be annoyed by
films that so casually restrict their characters to upper-class neighborhoods,
where money never, ever is an issue.
But that’s small stuff. Love, Simon is crafted with intelligence,
sincerity and heartfelt sensitivity, by filmmakers who clearly scrutinized
every detail: from the clothes these kids wear, to the carefully selected pop
and rap tunes that dot the soundtrack (something else Hughes excelled at).
This
one’s a keeper. Long may Simon reign.
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