I heard about this movie a long time ago when it making the waves about being the first major studio gay film and thought how they would do a rom-com with gays. It's about a gay person who's afraid to come out and discovers a pen pal online and they talk about the woes and experiences of being gay
In short, I expected a lot more from it than what I got.
Love, Simon is an okay, predictable fun time that nearly drags on but manages to keep a moving plot that results in a (predicting here) forgettable but enjoyable experience. Most of the runtime for some reason is spent on narrating emails that the two guys write to each other. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. Even when the text is short and clearly visible and readable on-screen; nope the camera has to jerk and pan in on the screen so you can read it word by word and listen to it being narrated. I mean, I get that the writing is an important part of this movie but goddamn have some faith in your audience members and only pay attention to the big moments, let us soak in the words of these characters. A secondary problem this creates is that when the movie shifts back to Simon and his reaction, you can't take it all in because you have just been lectured by his narration. I felt like I would have gotten more out of the actor's, who plays Simon, reactions if they let those moments just happen naturally.
Anyway, the other reason for this long runtime of the film (long by my standards of how long a rom-com should be anyway) is that the movie luxuriously spends a lot of time manifesting Simon's thoughts into real scenes that are played out for our benefit. And they are for our benefit because sometimes the movie is too on the nose about it albiet the pride dance is a fun scene for sure
Despite these two big issues and a general familiarity of the movie itself, it feels like you're just watching another teen rom-com and that you're just here to have fun. And it is fun, not very funny, but fun and the performances are good so you're never really bored. So the familiar feeling helps the movie and in the theme park of rom-coms this is certainly one of the smoothest rides I have been on.
Music isn't bad and there's a lot of it even an original song by Bleachers written for the film. It's very well directed too, especially the set design man, every background is predominantly made up of primary colors- red green blue and yellow, and it ends up giving the movie a thematic significance to it's aesthetic which is really pleasant. The guy Simon talks to on the emails is named Blue so that feeling of color being used for plot is there from the start. I'm only mentioning this here because the only other gay thing I have seen which is Heartstopper, also played extremely and memorably well with colors.
I should mention that it's also a very cringe-worthy film. This is a personal taste thing but I really like it when movies create cringe or extremely awkward scenes and pretend like it's normal. There are a lot of cringe things in Love, Simon but the fact that the background music doesn't miss a beat or the way it's shot feels earnest makes me admire the film for not just making fun of those ridiculous scenes but carrying them with the same wavelength as the rest of the movie.
Overall: Love, Simon is a good teen rom-com that happens to have a gay main character. Don't expect to be blown away by that. I still recommend Heartstopper if you want to actually be wowed while watching something gay
6/10