Oh boy, here it is. The "groundbreaking" gay teen romance everyone's been losing their minds over. Listen, folks, because I'm only going to say all this once.
I liked the damn thing, but it is super problematic. So let's all agree to stop calling it "groundbreaking". There is nothing groundbreaking here, except that a major studio backed this project. That's it.
The trouble for me started in the first scene, when Simon's voiceover began with "I'm just like you". I choked aloud on my peppermint. I don't know about you, but I was nothing like Simon. He's unbelievably privileged, living in a gorgeous house with hot parents and a bff-sister. He gets a car for his birthday and drives his group of incredibly diverse friends -- who are all much more intelligent and adjusted than any high schooler should be -- to school every day, where their teachers are impossibly crass and crude and somehow don't get fired for swearing or touching the kids but are nevertheless so charming and funny and kind that you don't care. Oh, and the school is so liberal-minded that the kids are performing Cabaret for the musical. That's right, Caba-gaddam-ret. Are you kidding me?!
I know what you're thinking, yeah but Micah every high school rom-com features unrealistically wealthy/intelligent/funny characters. Maybe. But not all of them start off deliberately selling themselves as a mirror image of their audience. And not all of them deal with real-life life-or-death situations that have conveniently disappeared from the narrative. For instance: Bullying. The film is about a gay kid anxiously agonizing over when and how he'll "come out"; the whole movie is about this super-privileged "problem" Simon has, even though he successfully passes as straight in so many ways and for so long, apparently. But why, exactly, does he agonize over this? His parents are aggressively liberal, and he says in voiceover he knows they'll be fine with it. His friends obviously wouldn't care. None of the characters cite religious objections. The vice principal of the school wears a pride flag pin. The only suggestion of bullying comes from two jerks who pretend to be Simon and Ethan, the token gay of the school, dry-humping on a cafeteria table. As if that was even comparable to the bullying some of us have received.
Speaking of Ethan, who is pretty great in a severely underwritten role, there is one nasty little scene I want to comment upon. After the "bullying" incident, Simon sort-of kind-of apologizes to him for never standing up for him, although he pointedly remarks that bullying never really happened that their school before he, Simon, came out. That is some tone-deaf bullshit if I ever heard it. Ethan, black and notably feminine, has surely not had it as easy as Simon thinks; and yet the film denies Ethan any chance to respond. The scene shifts and the moment is gone.
Simon's privilege extends to other spheres as well. He can actively perform in the school musical -- again, Cabaret, I just can't -- with no suspicion of faggotry, and even when the obnoxious star of the show tries to blackmail him, the two are a sort of friends. He thinks dancing to Whitney Houston with a bunch of peers in vibrant, colored t-shirts is too gay. After he learns that his crush likes Game of Thrones Simon walks down the school hall hunting for guys wearing fan shirts. For each he sees, worn by boys who are clearly more interested in comics and television than sports, he all but recoils in disgust. I can just read the bro-college version of Simon's Grindr profile now: "No fats, no femmes, masc4masc, not racist but...".
Think I'm wrong? Try again. Simon isn't even a great protagonist. He allows himself to be blackmailed (again, for no discernible reason) into manipulating his friends into dating each other. It's weird. Not even like Dangerous Liaisons weird. Just a sort of banal, irritating, stupid sitcom kind of weird. And then, at the end, after he realizes he screwed up all his friendships, they magically (and with no clear motive) all come flocking back to love and support him and even cheer him on as he kisses his newfound love interest.
I'm being pretty harsh here, but I was a little embarrassed to be supporting this movie. Greg Berlanti, you know better. You should have done better. I mean, come on, Josh Duhamel plays an "every dad" and Jennifer Garner is his hardcore white liberal wife. There are no stakes in this movie.
Which, if I may change my tone a tad, was endearing as all hell. After Oscar season, it was a little refreshing to just mindlessly enjoy a movie. It's a very funny, very sweet movie, and it even brought a tear or two to mine eye. It's got a killer soundtrack, too. And, yes, it normalizes gay teen romance by disturbing heteronormative conventions (sort of?), yadda yadda. I was a little empowered to hear the reasonably-full theater applaud and laugh and cry to the film, and I couldn't help but wonder how different my life would be had I seen a flick like this in middle school or high school.
But I also couldn't help but wonder how many people a movie like this will hurt, will convince that their situation is inescapable or hopeless, will push just that much closer to the brink. Even I, well past my high school years, walked out of the theater a little disheartened because I knew I was heading back out into the real world, where terrible things happen to people who aren't as lucky as Simon.
IMDb: Love, Simon
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