Nobody knows teenager is gay, but they will
Coming-out movie is heartfelt, although it doesn’t feel authentic
Greg Berlanti’s movie about a teenager’s coming out is nothing if not sincere. More to the point, it’s not very much except sincere.
“Love, Simon” is the story of a sweet-natured 17-year-old named Simon Spier (Nick Robinson), the elder child in a picture-perfect family that includes a dad ( Josh Duhamel) who’s a loving and lovable doofus, a therapist mom ( Jennifer Garner) who’s as nurturing as Bambi’s mother, and a younger sister (Talitha Bateman) who dotes on her older brother and enjoys cooking. They live in an “Ozzie and Harriet” house in a charming suburb where Simon goes to high school and hangs around with three other kids, including Leah (Katherine Langford), his best friend since he was 4.
Simon is gay but hasn’t come out yet. He begins a growing but anonymous online friendship with another closeted guy at school. The closer he gets to Blue, the closer he gets to coming out, especially to his friend.
Simon begins fantasizing about the identity of his pen pal. I’m not talking about wavy camerawork and harp music: I mean we actually see Bram (Keiynan Lonsdale), Cal (Miles Heizer) and Lyle (Tony Pollari) paired up with Simon
at various points. It takes a second to realize it’s just Simon’s imagination. A series of events, some unfortunate, most manufactured, impact Simon’s journey to coming out and the lives of his friends.
Berlanti’s purpose is clear: He means to show the empowerment that can occur in the process of coming out. And for a certain audience, that’s what “Love, Simon” can do. That audience is probably about the same age as Simon and his friends. There’s nothing wrong with that, but a bit more realism and authenticity not only could have made the film better, it also could have made Berlanti’s heartfelt intent more effective.
Through a nicely nuanced, underplayed performance, Robinson adds needed ballast in the title role. We may feel sure that things will turn out just swell for Simon, but Robinson expertly forces us to suspend disbelief enough to enjoy the valentine of a movie by projecting credible insecurity and effectively depicting the confusion of emotions that comes with adolescence.
Garner and Duhamel are set dressing, and Tony Hale is assigned the role of comic relief as an over-sharing school principal. Langford, best known as the star of “13 Reasons Why,” again proves she has remarkable depth, even in a supporting role.
As a television critic, I’m normally the last person to attribute the film’s weaknesses to the fact that Berlanti not only comes from the TV world, he owns a good piece of it, with shows like “The Flash,” “Arrow,” “Supergirl” and “Riverdale.” The element that keeps “Love, Simon” from fully realizing its potential is that it feels like something you’d see on TV. And not on TV in 2018 — TV you’d see in the 1980s.