Sincerity alone can’t sustain teen coming-out tale
Greg Berlanti’s movie about a teenager’s coming out is nothing if not sincere.
More to the point: It’s sincere but little else.
“Love, Simon” tells the story of a sweet-natured 17-year-old named Simon Spier (Nick Robinson). He’s the elder child in a pictureperfect family consisting of 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 out with three other kids, including Leah (Katherine Langford), his best friend since he was 4 years old.
Simon is gay but hasn’t come out. 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, at least to his friends.
Simon begins fantasizing
“Love, Simon.”
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 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 — affect 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 result from 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 would not only have improved the film but also made Berlanti’s heartfelt intent more effective.
Through a nicely nuanced, underplayed performance, Robinson adds needed ballast in the title role.
We might feel sure that things will turn out 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 oversharing school principal. Berlanti.
PG-13 (for thematic elements, sexual references, language and teen partying) 1:49 at the Columbus 10 at the Westpointe, Crosswoods, Dublin Village 18, Easton 30, Gateway, Georgesville Square 16, Grove City 14, Lennox 24, Movies 12 at Carriage Place, Movies 16 Gahanna, Pickerington, Polaris 18 and River Valley theaters
Langford, best-known as the star of “13 Reasons Why,” again proves remarkable depth, even in a supporting role.
As a TV critic, I’m typically the last person to attribute a film’s weaknesses to the fact that Greg Berlanti not only hails from the TV world, but he also owns a good piece of it, with shows such as “The Flash,” “Arrow,” “Supergirl” and “Riverdale.”
Yet “Love, Simon” fails to realize its potential because it feels like something you would see on television — in the 1980s, not 2018.