#the only unrealistic thing about baby alice was that she was so perfectly easy to handle

[tanu-the-avocado]

Best combination.

[realmzenith]

love, simon review pt. 2

i’m still basking in the beauty of love, simon bc it’s truly a classic. it’s worth more than every bit of hype it’s gotten

my previous review covered how naturally relatable love, simon is esp from a young person’s pov when considering the dynamics between simon and his peers! now i’d like to touch upon his family and how they related to the lgbt aspect of the movie because i loved his parents so much in the sense that they managed to be three dimensional, unique characters with flaws while simultaneously being- ah, this is where it gets spoiler laden

there are definite spoilers ahead ! my previous post was fairly spoiler free but this one will go more specific. you’ve been warned !

love, simon review tag

just. his parents were so supportive. 

to get this out of the way, wow, i wish his parents were my parents, and i cried like a baby when both of his parents accepted him on separate occasions. that however, is further in the future of this post. we need to, firstly, talk about simon coming out as it relates to his parents being supportive

i’m nb so simon’s struggle w coming out was, as i’m sure it was meant to be, relatable. when he came out to his parents it wasn’t instant wow we love you lets run around wearing pride flags on our foreheads. there was shock, fear even, definite unease esp on his father’s part. it wasn’t the ideal, yet it wasn’t horrible, but that’s precisely why it worked so well in this movie. the reactions of his family were v realistic 

his little sister, nora, was lovely. i almost wish they’d had a little more of her but she didn’t at all have a criminally small amount of screen time considering the running length of the movie. they defo got her vibe from the book. simon in the book emphasizes how after his coming out it was one of the few times he’d seen her stand up to ppl as she was more of the blase live let live type and that shone through in a beautiful way. it didn’t feel like it was last minute added on tho i will admit it wasn’t on the same level of perfectly natural as some other parts of the movie (understandably)

however, the nora scene that rang most true w me was simon yelling at nora after she tried to confront him on the issue of him being exposed as gay on their school social media site. you could see the tear tracts on her face and that could’ve come off as overtly dramatic but they did a wonderful job of emphasizing the emotions she had for simon and the dynamic they shared subtly and strikingly. as an older sibling it hit hard

simon’s mom was a v realistic character going from her quirky psychology insights to her true to life frazzled mom vibe. and she was so, so sweet. the scene where she was trying to make those feminist signs to the scene where she was watching the video simon simon’s father made for their anniversary showcased her personality. it could’ve been so easy to fall into a trap of making her two dimensional but the movie spun a mother more than real for simon which was key

ok now let me just. how she handled it. she didn’t push for him to tell her yet she wasn’t unrealistically good at handling it but she tried her best and when he was ready to talk about it again she listened and then on top of that she had such a beautiful acceptance rhetoric to give him that was unbelievably real and so personal. 

it was so so good how that scene was shot. the closer up on her face as she spoke about exhaling rlly grabbed you and it felt like she was talking to you which as someone who’s been thru the whole come out to your parent shebang, it was just weirdly melancholy and freeing and heartbreaking and uplifting all at once to see her accept him in the way that i’m sure many of us would’ve loved to have been right off the bat and they gave us that. love, simon gave us that.

so much power to emily spier. she was truly an icon. 

after her acceptance of simon i genuinely thought things couldn’t get better but then love, simon surpassed all my expectations once again with simon’s dad. jack spier, folks, love, simon rlly went off and gave us this. he was, again, such a real character. it would’ve been so easy to push him into the jock dad stereotype simon even introduces him as, but they pulled out a ridiculous side with the scene with his painfully average fourth grader anniversary video, the tried and true dad side with his ridiculous, insensitive at times, but classically dad joke scenes and even an emotional, affectionate side with his acceptance of simon

his dad did it right in the end. he recognized his mistakes w the jokes, tried to the best of his ability to apologize and reassured simon that he was more than loved and accepted and that was so key. his dad could’ve brushed it off, said they were just jokes and left it there but no, his dad put himself out there and apologized as a parent should and confronted the real wall simon coming out had drawn up should he have chosen not to address it again. 

he welcomed simon with open arms despite how hard it might’ve been for him to show that much emotion as was only right yet it it was just. v real. v sweet. v touching.

one criticism i have is the lack of alice spier, simon’s older sister. in the book they had such a classic sibling heart to heart over alice hiding her bf and simon hiding his sexuality and how revealing either of those things was in a way the same. 

ofc the theme of revealing new parts of one self being akin to coming out repeatedly was still brought thru into the movie beautifully but it would’ve been nice to see alice play into that realization of simon’s. it would’ve been easy to make her seem like an unnatural part so i see why they cut her out but seeing as they did a fantastic job w everything else i don’t doubt that they could’ve managed it

overall, they did wonderful w simon’s family. it would’ve been simple to force them into stereotypes and 2d molds bc they’re just the family, they aren’t the friends or a love interest, but love, simon sculpted us a real, flawed, yet accepting and supportive family that i’m sure struck many of us right in the heart