Love, Simon Review

Here's a subgenre of film that I have mostly avoided on this blog. The LGBT drama. The conversation surrounding these films is a very sensitive one to most and my feelings towards them are very complex, so it's hard to nail it down as to why I've avoided the conversation on my blog, but it essentially boils down to the simple fact that I'm not the target demographic here. I'm a moderately conservative, religious, heterosexual, white male. I try my best to be open-minded, understanding and progressive, but there's some barriers that I simply can't overcome, the most obvious one being that I don't have the personal experience necessary to properly analyze these films from the perspective of one who has gone through the same things. Simply put, I'm a straight man who is attracted to women. That's not a choice I made. That's just who I am. So when it comes to movies about the LGBT community, I feel like I'm on the outside looking in. Thus when one comes around that is being universally praised by everyone who's seen it, I simply choose to not deal with the potential backlash I'd receive if I admitted that I was unimpressed. Quite frankly, if I'm not the target demographic and I didn't like the movie, then my opinion doesn't really mean anything. So I choose not to fight.

I mean, what if I told you that I hated both "Carol" and "The Danish Girl"? What if I told you that I enjoyed "Moonlight," but didn't think it was the greatest movie ever made? What if I told you that I was mixed on "Call Me by Your Name," with certain aspects being phenomenal while other aspects being atrociously bad? Would you respect my opinion and still be my friend? Or would you sit there in angry silence, never trusting a single word I wrote again? If you stand on the former side of the fence, well then thanks. I appreciate that. But I know there's a lot of people that would be on the latter side, even if they would refuse to admit it. I'd be labeled as the homophobic friend who just didn't get it. And that's just not something that sits well in my mind. So why am I breaking the silence now with "Love, Simon"? Well, quite frankly, this movie is different than most other LGBT dramas. And I plan on driving that home in this review here in a bit. Like most of these movies, I was hesitant about it for a long time, but at some point during the marketing, the light bulb went off in my head, and before I even saw the movie, I knew it would be different. Why? Because this is a Greg Berlanti film. The creator of the Arrowverse. That's my exact cup of tea and I feel completely comfortable discussing it.

Before I discuss all things Arrowverse and the parallels there are to that universe and this movie, I want to drive home why this is different than other LGBT dramas. What it really boils down to is politics. We live in a very progressive era where society as a whole not only has realized that there's a lot of social injustices going on in the world, but they've decided to actually do something about it. Certain cultures, races and sexes have spent their whole history being oppressed and we're trying to undo that. I love that idea. More representation is needed from females, minorities and the LGBT crowd instead of having straight, white males dominate society as a whole. However, when it comes to film, I think there's a right way and a wrong way to go about it and the best example I can think of to illustrate this is to look at the issue of female representation in film. Yes, we need more female-led movies, both in front and behind the camera. But do you do things the "Ghostbusters" way or the "Wonder Woman" way? Both movies had the same general goal of provided female-led movies, but completely opposite ways of going about it. "Ghostbusters" tried to forcefully shove everything down your throat while "Wonder Woman" was much more natural and subtle in their approach.

When I say "Ghostbusters" in this instance, I hope you know I am talking about the new female reboot. The way they decided to go about things was to overcompensate to the extreme. Given that females have been oppressed for many years, they felt it was necessary to make a movie where the women were the only ones who could solve the problems while all the males in the movie were bumbling idiots. So not only was the movie pro-female, but it was also anti-male. I didn't hate the movie because of that. The bigger issue was with the writing and the story. But I do acknowledge that the approach wasn't a great one. Meanwhile, "Wonder Woman" had every opportunity to be an anti-male movie, but even in situations where the door was wide open for that, the movie refused to go down that path. They simply presented the world with a strong female character who was very capable of getting the job done, thus providing women, young and old, with a hero and role model to look up to. At the same time, the movie was also pro-male in that Wonder Woman needed Chris Pine just as much as Chris Pine needed Wonder Woman. Yes, Wonder Woman had the superpowers in the movie, but neither character was dominate over the other.

Now if I apply that to this situation, I'm happy to inform you that "Love, Simon" is the "Wonder Woman" of the LGBT dramas. I won't name specific titles, but a lot of the LGBT dramas that I've seen come with a specific, political agenda and that agenda is to shove the LGBT culture down the throats of the whole world, showing how amazing they are, while at the same time viciously attacking traditional marriage and religion, as if the three elements of society can't coexist, just like "Ghostbusters" was out to prove that, not only are women capable of getting the job done, but they're the only ones that can get the job done while all males are idiots. If we're going to have a balanced world, we need to have the goal of being a balanced world. I know the scales have been tipped a specific way for many years, but to overcompensate and tip the balance the opposite way does not get the job done. Instead it attempts to do things the way President Coin wanted to do things in the end of "Mockingjay," causing Katniss to act in the way she did. "Love, Simon" is not out to shove the LGBT culture down your throat. It does not attack traditional marriage. It does not claim that religion and LGBT rights can't coexist. It's just telling the struggles of a gay, teenage high school kid.

Because of this, I didn't find myself watching in apprehension. I didn't walk out feeling the need to defend my religious views or my support of traditional marriage. I instead became invested in a story about a kid who had this huge secret his whole life that he had no idea how to approach. I became invested in his story and in his character. Even though I have good friends who are gay and I've learned a lot about the types of things they had to deal with growing up, I still don't have that personal experience for myself being that's not who I am. While watching some films that makes me feel ostracized because the way they approach things make me feel like being gay is a prerequisite to understanding the film, "Love, Simon" instead feels like it was politely made for everyone in that I felt like Simon was telling me his story without trying to force his views down my throat or attempt to change my opinion on marriage and religion. That made me feel quite comfortable watching this movie, which in turn caused me to be emotionally invested with this story. I walked out thinking that those who are gay are going to really love and relate to this movie, as many of my gay friends already have, and those who are not gay are going to appreciate this perspective.

This is now where the Greg Berlanti angle comes in. Realizing that he was at the helm of this project put me at ease before I even saw this movie because he had already done this as the creator of the Arrowverse. If the term Arrowverse confuses you, what I am referring to with that is the combined DC TV universe on The CW with "Arrow," "The Flash," "Supergirl" and "Legends of Tomorrow." DC may be struggling on the big screen with their cinematic DCEU as "Wonder Woman" is the only movie in that universe that has been consistently praised, but they're rocking the world on the small screen as "Arrow" just got renewed for season 7, "The Flash" for season 5 and both "Supergirl" and "Legends" for season 4. That will be over 400 combined episodes of television once those announced seasons are complete. And I've faithfully kept up with all four shows. Now I don't know how much of the episode-to-episode decisions Berlanti makes with these shows, but as the creator I don't think it's any coincidence that there are certain running themes across all of the shows that are also very similar to "Love, Simon." Every single show has rather naturally implemented LGBT story arcs and in three of them, LGBT characters are in the lead role. And I've never had a problem with it.

That's why when I made the Greg Berlanti connection, I immediate became comforted because I know how his shows have handled this and I figured he'd do things in a similar way. Specifically in the Arrowverse, I'm thinking of the character of Sara Lance on "Legends" and Alex Danvers on "Supergirl." Season 2 of "Supergirl" focused heavily on Alex Danvers' realization of her sexual identity as a lesbian and slowly started coming out to everyone. Then she began a relationship with a police girl who had come out a long time ago and there was a lot of drama with those two that I rather enjoyed. It was all handled in a very normal, natural way and actually was some of the best romance drama in the Arrowverse. With Sara Lance in "Legends," the proper label for her is bisexual as she started out as Oliver Queen's girlfriend on "Arrow" before the show revealed that she had a serious girlfriend in the League of Shadows. They eventually transitioned Sara from "Arrow" to "Legends" where she is now the leader and captain of their crew. Her journey as a bisexual character isn't a huge focus of the show, but they play around with it occasionally and when they do, it's handled rather well. Sara and Alex even had a bit of a fling on one of the crossover episodes, which amused me.

I hope you're fine with me talking about all of this in relation to "Love, Simon" without actually discussing the movie itself. In my mind, this was a better angle to take this review because I have been able to get all my thoughts out without spoiling much of the actual plot. However, I will admit that "Love, Simon" wasn't all rainbows and butterflies for me. Yet you can rest at ease knowing that my issues with this movie had little to do with the approach they took in presenting this LGBT story or Simon's specific journey. Those aspects of the movie stand as a shining example of how I think LGBT stories should be handled and whenever they are handled wrong, I now have a movie to turn to as an example of a movie that did it right. My biggest issue that I had was with a side character named Martin. In a world full of realistic characters, he stuck out as a sore thumb as someone who felt more cartoonish. I think the actor Logan Miller did great with the material he was given. He took it and ran with it. The character himself just felt fake. I would be able to write this off as an annoying side character of which exists in a lot of these high school dramas, but things that his character did were integral to the overarching plot of the movie and I didn't like it.

The other major problem I had is something I need to tread lightly on because it involved the final act of the movie. This is something that the Arrowverse has a major problem with, too. They LOVE playing the whodunit mystery game. It's a huge problem in "The Flash" specifically, but it has existed to some extent in every show. In the Arrowverse it has to do with the villains. They love stringing out the big reveal as to who the major villain of the season is. In season 3 of "The Flash," they waited until one of the final episodes of the season to reveal who this mysterious Savitar character really was. They did the same thing with Zoom in season 2. I got tired of this real quick. As I'm thinking of examples, in "Arrow" season 4, they revealed at the start of the season that a main character was going to die and they made the audience play that guessing game until the last part of the season. Again, I don't know what part of that was Greg Berlanti's decision, but is it a coincidence that the same thing is done in "Love, Simon" with who this mysterious email friend is? Instead of revealing who Simon was emailing partway through the movie and spending the rest of the time developing the relationship, they played the bait and switch game with us until the very end of the movie.

When that big reveal did happen, I enjoyed a big, cheerful laugh for reasons I won't spoil. But it reminded me of those Gorilla Glue commercials where the gorilla jumps out at them, hands them the glue, and they exclaim, "Of course!" Knowing Berlanti, this made so much sense. Message me in private and we'll talk more about what I mean. Overall, though, I did have a very positive outlook towards this movie. Instead of feeling political and in your face, this felt like a natural story. They didn't have an agenda with this film. They just decided to tell a story about a gay student in high school struggling with this big secret he has of being gay. It's quite engaging and done in a very refreshing way. Nick Robinson ("Jurassic World") does a great job as Simon. Josh Duhamel and Jennifer Garner are excellent as his parents. And his group of high school friends, played by Katherine Langford ("13 Reasons Why"), Alexandra Shipp ("X-Men: Apocalypse"), Jorge Lendeborg Jr. ("Spider-Man: Homecoming") and Keiynan Lonsdale ("The Flash") were all great as well. There's just those few major issues I had with the character of Martin and the heavy bait-and-switch reveal strategy, but mostly I came out of this with a positive experience as good high school drama. I'm going to give "Love, Simon" an 8/10.