A young coming-of-age teenage boy, Simon Spier, goes through a different kind of Romeo and Juliet story. Simon has a love connection with a boy, Blue, by email, but the only problem is that Simon has no idea who he's talking to. Simon must discover who that boy is--who Blue is. Along the way, he tries to find himself as well.
Greg Berlanti's groundbreaking gay romcom is an exuberant gift, a John Hughes movie for audiences who just got woke and the first mainstream studio release to put a closeted teen front and center.
It's highly unlikely you'll read a review of this film that doesn't contain the word "adorable". It's equally unlikely that you'll be able to watch it without grinning from ear to ear.
Love, Simon is filled with love and recognition as it takes the high school rom-com template into new Hollywood territory, and it charms in the process.
It's too sanded down to ever truly snag on something like a real, specific, visceral emotion, but it's got the pop-chorus bombast that will get you to some kind of objective sense of fireworks, one way or another.
It sticks to the rules of its genre, right down to the cloying music and obligatory schmaltzy climax, and uses them to demonstrate a truth that should be obvious: all love stories are essentially the same.
Thankfully, it's nicely made... well acted, as funny as it is gently moving, and genuinely intriguing, as we watch Simon respond to online posts by the mysterious 'Blue', who admits that he is gay but won't reveal his identity.
The film is as sweet as bubble-gum-flavored medicine; it arrives as if without cinematic lineage-unburdened by cinema's history of equating gayness with death. It just stops short of producing a picture of gay attraction.