Video review: "Love, Simon"

We’re nearly halfway through 2018 now, and “Love, Simon” remains my favorite movie of the year. That might have seemed like a leap when the dramatic teen comedy came out in March, but with nearly half the year gone, it’s only cemented the film’s place in my estimation.

It’s the story of a high school senior, Simon Spier, played winningly by Nick Robinson. He’s a typical Centennial -- he lives in a fast-paced world where social experiences are shared as much digitally as in person. The only difference from a 1980s romcom by John Hughes is that Simon is gay.

This is not a movie where Simon struggles with his sexuality -- he knows who he is and is fine with it. But he’s wrestling with how to come out to his friends and family. Then a strange thing happens: somebody using the pseudonym “Blue” writes about his own anxiety about coming out on the school message board.

He and Simon strike up a correspondence, and their romance blooms from afar. He knows he’s in love, just not with whom. He imagines various boys he encounters as being Blue.

Trouble arises when Simon’s correspondence is stolen by a classmate, who blackmails Simon into assisting him with his own romantic pursuits. This means manipulating his trio of best friends, Leah (Katherine Langford), Nick (Jorge Lendeborg Jr.) and Abby (Alexandra Shipp).

Jennifer Garner plays Simon’s mom and Josh Duhamel is the dad, and both offer authentic, loving presences in the background. Tony Hale plays the well-meaning but inept vice principal, and Logan Miller is Martin, the oddly not totally hate-able jerk yanking Simon’s chain.

“Love, Simon” is a smart, funny movie that is also holds keen observations and insights about what it’s like to be a gay teen, or any kind of teen, stumbling around in love in 2018. 

Video extras are quite nice. They include a feature-length commentary track by director Greg Berlanti, producer Isaac Klausner and co-screenwriter Issac Aptaker, deleted scenes and a photo gallery from the set.

There are also five making-of documentary shorts: “The Adaptation,” which talks about turning the book by Becky Albertalli into a movie; “The Squad,” on the film’s casting process; “#FirstLoveStoryContest,” in which fans talk about their own first encounters with romance; “Dear Georgia” and “Dear Atlanta,” which focus on the filming locations and culture of Atlanta, where the book takes place and the film was shot.

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Review: "Love, Simon"

So here is the first truly great and important movie of the year, and no, it’s not the one about the guy in the black cat suit who thinks he’s so cool.

“Love, Simon” reminds me a lot of those John Hughes high school movies from the ‘80s. They seemed like pop confections at first glance, filled with love triangles and teen angst. But they had deeper themes going on just behind the surface, about how we all feel alienated and alone.

This movie is a little more conspicuous in its ambitions, starring Nick Robinson as Simon Spier, a high school senior who’s on the verge of coming out as gay. He gains the courage to do so after striking up an anonymous correspondence with another student who posted to their school’s message board, and over time finds himself falling for this unseen lover.

Very Cyrano de Bergerac.

Part of the fantasy is that Simon envisions different boys he encounters to be “Blue,” his pen pal’s pseudonym. Each leads to a dead end, which depresses Simon but also spurs him to the next romantic bloom.

Meanwhile, he finds himself unwittingly pushing away his three best friends: Leah (Katherine Langford), best pals since kindergarten; Nick (Jorge Lendeborg Jr.), an exuberant soccer star; and Abby (Alexandra Shipp), the new girl at school whom they’ve adopted into their little clique. Complicating things further are some unseen love lines between the foursome that will come into play.

It’s based on the novel, “Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda” by Becky Albertalli -- which is a much better title -- adapted for the screen by Elizabeth Berger and Isaac Aptaker, and directed by Greg Berlanti.

“Love, Simon” wears the clothes of a high school comedy, and indeed it’s often a ferociously funny film. But it’s also wise and perceptive, treating its largely teen cast as imperfect individuals rather than idealized or contemptible caricatures.

One of the things I really admired about the movie is that almost everybody in it comes across as looking foolish at some point or another, but also has moments of nobility and grace. Even Martin, the socially inept heel who threatens to out Simon after intercepting his emails -- played with unnerving, offbeat charisma by Logan Miller -- gets a turn to be the cool kid.

Likewise, Simon’s dad is played by Josh Duhamel, a jokey, ex-jock type who we suspect wouldn’t be too receptive to having a gay son. They get a scene together that left puddles under my seat. Jennifer Garner is the mom, who’s more serious and centered.

Tony Hale turns up as Mr. Worth, the incredibly exuberant vice principal at the school, constantly forcing uncomfortable connections with students in between confiscating their cellphones. Yet he projects an aura of desperation beneath the punch lines, and we can easily envision what his own high school experience was like.

“Love, Simon” is a lovely movie because it accepts that everybody feels weird and awkward as a teenager, especially when we’re negotiating the first stumbling steps in the dance of love, and even more so when we find our affections flowing in a direction not always deemed socially acceptable.

Here’s a film that simply says it’s OK to be young and gay and in love... even if you don’t know exactly who you’re in love with just yet.

Review: "Safe Haven"

It's hard to believe that just a few years ago the phrase "based on a novel by Nicholas Sparks" would've produced only shrugs from most moviegoers. But then "The Notebook" blew up in 2004, making of stars out of Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams, and creating a burning desire in Hollywood to adapt other books from Sparks' Southern-fried romantic/drama oeuvre.

But here's the thing: there hasn't really been a good movie based on his material since. "Nights in Rodanthe" disappeared without a trace. "Dear John" was a dirge-like bummer, and "The Last Song" and "The Lucky One" were ill-fated coming-of-age projects for tween stars Miley Cyrus and Zac Efron.

Critics hated them, but they had respectable box office tallies for low-budget films, so along comes "Safe Haven" as the next in the Sparks line.

Like "Dear John" it was directed by Lasse Hallström, thrice an Oscar nominee and the rare European filmmaker who seems to embrace the more saccharine aspects of Hollywood moviemaking, at his own peril.

The result is a great-looking, sun-dappled story about life on the North Carolina coast that's also devoid of much dramatic or emotional heft.

It's about a woman on the run, hiding out from the law after being accused of a brutal, bloody murder. Needless to say, she falls in love with a local dreamboat, starts putting down roots and feeling secure before her haunted past shows up on her adopted doorstep.

A big part of the movie's problem is Julianne Hough in the lead role. The "Dancing with the Stars" star has mostly done song-and-dance pictures like "Footloose" and "Rock of Ages," and simply doesn't possess the sort of dramatic acting tools for a part like this.

We know from the get-go that Katie was an abused woman who went on the lam after stabbing her attacker, so the screenplay (by Leslie Bohem and Dana Stevens) requires her to go through some pretty major transformations -- from self-doubting victim to new gal in town coming out of her shell to strong, resourceful woman ready to take the next steps in life.

But Hough's placid exterior is more shy cheerleader than woman rising up.

Josh Duhamel is better as Alex, who runs Ryan's Port Market in Southport, N.C. He's a young single dad raising two moppets after cancer took his wife. He's been keeping his head down, he says, just trying to make a life for his kids, and when he falls for Katie it's like lifting his head up again for the first time.

Noah Lomax plays Josh, who's on the cusp of adolescence and testing his dad, the self-appointed protector of his mother's memory. Mimi Kirkland as Lexie reaches a level of adorableness heretofore unseen in cinematic children.

Katie gets a waitressing job at Ivan's, the local seafood shack, and begins a tenuous friendship with her neighbor Jo (Cobie Smulders). When Alex, noticing that Katie trudges daily from her remote cottage to the shoreline every day, gives her an old bicycle, it's Jo who instructs her that refusing gifts south of the Mason-Dixon line is a no-no -- particularly not from wounded widowers who somehow find the time to keep their abs sculpted.

The story keeps shifting back to Tierney (a creepily effective David Lyons), the Boston detective who treats tracking down Katie as much more than a standard domestic murder case. "Nobody is innocent," he insists. "We bring 'em in, and the other guy sorts 'em out."

Things lead to a fairly predictable place, and an outcome that is never truly in doubt. Naysayers may dismiss Sparks' books as pap for undiscriminating mass consumption, but I think there's the bones of a good story in "Safe Haven." It just needed a different cast and crew to find it.

2 stars out of four