Love, Simon (2018)
March 17, 2018 10:50 AM - Subscribe

Simon Spier keeps a huge secret from his family, his friends, and all of his classmates: he's gay. When that secret is threatened, Simon must face everyone and come to terms with his identity.
posted by DevilsAdvocate (14 comments total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
 
Saw it tonight. Very sweet. Not the most well written teen movie I’ve ever seen, but certainly engrossing enough. More LGBT love stories please!

I can’t believe Jennifer Garner and Josh Duhmeal play parents of teens now.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 9:20 PM on March 17, 2018 [3 favorites]


I saw this yesterday and agree—not the best movie ever, but a very sweet feel-good film for the most part. I thought most of the dialogue between the kids seemed very natural and true.
A lot of high school kids were in the theater and there was a huge burst of applause during a pivotal kiss near the end of the movie!
posted by bookmammal at 2:49 AM on March 18, 2018 [2 favorites]


Saw it yesterday and enjoyed it. My husband thought it would have been more meaningful if not every potential “Blue” was conventionally attractive.

Apparently it’s based on a YA novel called Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda. It did kind of feel like a book adaptation to me.

Not too many people at the Saturday afternoon screening but there was a group of teens who sounded to be enjoying it.
posted by larrybob at 8:26 AM on March 18, 2018 [1 favorite]


I went to see it this past weekend and I liked it, it was funny and sweet. I wish movies like this were around when I was a teen.
posted by selenized at 9:48 AM on March 19, 2018


I saw it Friday and thought it was cute. Nice to see a major studio release a movie like this aimed at a wide audience.
posted by Automocar at 9:59 AM on March 19, 2018


My husband thought it would have been more meaningful if not every potential “Blue” was conventionally attractive.

Yeah, at the end, when Simon says something like, Blue I don't care what you look like, I thought, uh, is that really true? We already saw his imaginary hallway of horrors with all the OMG NERDY GUYS!! in the Game of Thrones t-shirts.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 12:12 PM on March 19, 2018 [2 favorites]


Twitter thread: Dave Holmes on watching Love, Simon with his 85-year-old mom.
posted by larrybob at 4:46 PM on March 19, 2018 [2 favorites]


I’m a big fan of the book, and I was HUGELY impressed with the adaptation. They were so smart with the ways that they kept the audience guessing. I knew who Blue was from the start, and even I had moments of suspense! I also had no idea how they were going to pull off the Martin character, but I was super impressed with how they managed to capture him as well.

I also ended up watching it multiple times—partly to support the box office, partly because they were cleaning the ducts in my apt so I had to be out of the house, but mostly because watching this movie multiple times is SO FUN. It’s the closest to an interactive theater experience that I’ve had at a movie in a long time. People gasping with shock, people shouting out “oh no!”, people crying, people clapping, heartrending sighs.

I also noticed that when I went to a matinee show, there were a lot of elderly men there. Men who left the theater walking with canes, holding hands. Men who are of an age that means they lived during the time of Stonewall, and during the AIDS crisis, and on that day they watched a movie about a boy wanting to kiss another boy. And then he did. And the audience cheered. It really showed how much that idiotic “do LGBTQ teens really NEED this movie?” thinkpiece missed the point.

(Also, regarding Simon assuming only a cute boy could be Blue, I’m of three minds about it:
-it is a major point of the book, that Simon can be really oblivious and he assumes certain things about Blue that turn out not to be true— in the book, Blue is the one who writes “Why is straight the default? (And why is white the default, for that matter?)” So in a way, Simon’s blinders are an homage to the book. (Also in the book: after Simon is outed, the Cal character comes out as bisexual and asks Simon if he wants to “hang out”, so Simon gets the chance to have a very cute boyfriend if that’s all he’s into, but he says no because he’s in love with Blue, regardless of who he turns out to be.)
-Also in the book, the possibility that Martin is Blue is a much bigger plot point, so even though it wound up as a throwaway joke in the movie, they did gesture to that.
-Maybe we should have a minimum of thirty-five hetero teen romances where the protagonists think about falling in love with people who aren’t conventionally attractive before we hold the first ever gay teen romance to this standard? I mean?)
posted by a fiendish thingy at 7:01 AM on March 20, 2018 [9 favorites]


That Martin, the villain, was an obnoxious theater kid felt like a personal insult. Oy, it burns.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 9:54 AM on March 20, 2018 [1 favorite]


I just finished the book and the movie was a fairly good adaptation, but they definitely sanded off the (barely there edges) and pumped up the teen romcom drama cliches.

-Martin is much more villainous in the movie (he doesn't post screenshots in the book)
-His homecoming speech isn't in the book at all, nor is his Waffle House performance with Abby, although he does sing
-There's a bit more to Simon finally meeting Blue, and the carnival stuff is definitely played as a Big Moment in the movie much more than the book
-Simon's friends are also mad at him in the book, but it's much lighter than the movie (probably because the blackmailing spirals out of control much more in the movie)
-Some oblique references to queer desire in the book--it's heavily implied that Simon and Blue are both masturbating thinking about each other, for instance--the movie is entirely devoid of any whiff of queer sex

I think they're clearly aimed at different audiences, but both are worth checking out, I think.
posted by Automocar at 10:06 AM on March 20, 2018 [1 favorite]


Read the book a couple years ago, saw the movie tonight. Loved both. I think the movie was very faithful to the book, but in a way that worked, as not all adaptions can. I’m not much into romcoms, but I’m glad I made an exception for this sweet one.
posted by greermahoney at 8:55 PM on March 20, 2018


I think this was a fairly faithful adaption of the book. I get that they need to change some things to make the movie they want and it's not like you can cram every detail in. But why did they erase the bi characters? They had Cal on screen, being sympathetic, but they don't let him say, "I'm bisexual."

They also had another character showing an interest which she didn't have in the books, and which would make her story in Leah on the Offbeat (the sequel), really not work. I was really hoping that they'd film a sequel but now I'm not sure they even could. The sequel lets some of the bi and questioning characters tell more of the next story and we get to see how much Simon was always missing. (I like the sequel more than the first book, which is hard to do in a series.)
posted by Margalo Epps at 10:13 PM on June 23, 2018


Just watched this and haven't read the book. I am happy to have another LGBT movie with a happy ending, happy Pride everyone.
posted by ellieBOA at 5:56 AM on June 24, 2018


The ending totally riffed on Never Been Kissed. It was a cute movie.
posted by the webmistress at 6:57 PM on November 16, 2018


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