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.
