Review – Love, Simon

Love, Simon is a movie that I didn’t love.  I didn’t even really like it.  This is a movie that takes an interesting premise that adds too much fluff and non-sense that ruin everything that is good about it.

The movie is about Simon (Nick Robinson), a high schooler with a pretty good life going for him, who has one big secret: he’s gay.  He hasn’t told any of his friends or family and his secret is keeping Simon from becoming his true self.  On an online message board seen throughout the entire school, a fellow student comes out as being gay and Simon forms a friendship with the anonymous student through e-mail.  As the bond between the two grows, and Simon desperately tries to figure out who this anonymous student is, Simon still struggles with telling those closest to him.

All of that sounds like a great movie.  But that isn’t the entire movie.  The movie also features a blackmailing plot that takes up the whole middle of the movie, other relationships throughout the movie besides Simon’s that hold no emotional weight, some bullying, an extravagant and awkward love professing scene, and whole bunch of small stuff that is all insignificant.  What all of this stuff did was take away from the core story of Simon and his struggle to come out.  I loved the scenes where Simon was interacting with his parents and his friends, and I was fascinated by his struggle and by his internal conflict about when to come out and how to come out.  I wanted to learn more about his life and learn more about his everyday happenings and learn more about his family.  However, instead of learning more about these interesting pieces and diving more into Simon’s life, we are given a whole lot of irrelevant plot points and characters that add nothing to Simon or his story.

Robinson is great as Simon and really conveys his struggle perfectly.  He’s funny and sweet and shows a great combination of vulnerability and confidence.  Simon is playing two sides in life, the one his friends see and his true self, and Robinson plays both perfectly.  He is a rockstar in this movie.  The only other performances I really liked were from Jennifer Garner and Josh Duhamel as Simon’s parents.  They are both incredibly charming and have really powerful scenes towards the end of the movie that are sure to pull at the heart strings and bring out some tissues.  Everyone else in the cast is just kind of there and I hated Tony Hale as Simon’s whacky Vice Principal.  I don’t know what movie he thought he was in, but his performance missed every mark.

Love, Simon is a movie that will work for some people, but one that didn’t work for me.  Nick Robinson is sensational and the story of Simon is great. This movie needed to be simpler and more character driven about an important issue many high school students face today.  But too many sub-plots and uninteresting side characters take away from the great core story, and that is the reason why I didn’t love this movie.

Did you see Love, Simon?  What did you think?  Comment below or hit me up on Twitter and Instagram, @kevflix, or on Facebook by searching Kevflix.