Love, Simon: Utterly adorable

Love, Simon (2018) • View trailer 
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.

Masters of all they survey (well ... maybe not): Simon (Nick Robinson, second from left) and
his friends — from left, Nick (Jorge Lendeborg Jr.), Abby (Alexandra Shipp) and Leah
(Katherine Langford) — chat while heading toward drama class, and another rehearsal
for the high school musical.

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.