Review of Love, Simon (2018) by Chris O — 21 Jun 2018

Even with a more than rocky first half, the second half manages to hit all the right notes.

Everyone deserves a great love story. But for seventeen-year old Simon Spier it's a little more complicated: he's yet to tell his family or friends he's gay and he doesn't actually know the identity of the anonymous classmate he's fallen for online. Resolving both issues proves hilarious, terrifying and life-changing.

Who doesn't love a coming of age film? I mean, they're some of my favorites. In fact, one of my favorite coming of age films stars Nick Robinson ("The Kings of Summer"). Here, I had pretty high expectations. "Love, Simon" was the film that a lot of people had been talking about. Since I'm back home for the summer, I've been buying movies like crazy, and "Love, Simon" was one of the films that I bought. After watching it yesterday, I still have mixed opinions, mostly a fight between the two halves of the film. Anyways, here we go.

Let's start with why I didn't like the first half. The first half of the movie was, well, robust (not in a good way). The first half of the film didn't start out well. It started with a cliche, unoriginal voice over that every coming of age film has. The content of that speech wasn't too bad but from there, it went downhill. It continually hit every cliche that you can hit in a coming of age film. Other than some really small ticks and notions, I couldn't find any reason why this was different from any other coming of age film because, it wasn't! I hate to say it but the first half was bad and it stopped this film from being truly great.

However, when we hit the second half following a major turning point for our main character, things started to pick up greatly. They really started to hit some really good notes, executing on some typically moments pretty well. They did a great job of storytelling and using this film's greatest component to its advantage. From there, the film managed to hit so many different emotional notes and it managed to speak to all of us. No joke, I was in tears for multiple moments. Granted, I'm a straight male, so I can't relate to a lot of the problems showed in this film, but the movie did a good job of showing me that perspective and allowing me to relate to the main character. From there, I thought this film hit it out of the ball park and managed to give a roller coaster of emotions for the last hour.

The story in general was fun. I thought the performances were strong, even if some things were just plain ridiculous. Honestly, it's a feel good film and an easy watch. There's a not a ton to say about this film, as it was pretty by-the-books, but I did enjoy it. It gave us characters that are way beyond high school and it tried to be way more self-aware than it was. The movie tried to be smarter in some parts and it just faltered. Overall, it was a movie filled with cringey moments and powerful ones. How do you really formulate an opinion for something with two opposite ends?

To conclude, "Love, Simon" was a mixed bag. I genuinely want to say that the first half was bad, but the second half was great. The first part was the thing that held this movie back from being really, really great, but "Love, Simon" was still a good film overall.