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Love, Simon (2018)


Athena
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Directed by Greg Berlanti and based on the novel Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agendaby Becky Albertalli. The film stars Nick Robinson, Josh Duhamel, and Jennifer Garner. The film is scheduled to be released on March 16, 2018.

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I liked the movie and thought it was sweet. It was a neat trick how Blue kept morphing into whoever Simon thought he might be at different points in the movie.  

  • Love 5
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I watched this with my cousin today and we both loved it. The soundtrack was great and it has a nice mix of humour, drama, and sweet moments thrown it. We also both teared up during multiple scenes. The casting was great, too. I would definitely watch it again.

  • Love 3
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Saw this with a friend yesterday and we both loved it. It's exactly what it's been said to be, a John Hughes movie with a gay teen as the protagonist. The cast is great. I wish they'd included a little more of Simon and Blue's conversation from the book at the end, but it was adorable all the same.

  • Love 1
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It was sweet and utterly delightful... my theater burst into cheering and applause when S & B finally kissed... and kept it up through the end.  It was so great.  I've only had that happen at Marvel movies.  

  • Love 1
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Yeah, the audience I was with clapped, too.

I'm a little disappointed that Love Simon only made 11.5 million...although with the budget and the fact that they didn't give this a 3k plus release it's not a bad take at all. I hope this has legs and it doesn't fade like Paper Towns did. And again, teen movies just don't make the kind of money they used to unless it's an adaption of a book that was a serious phenomenon.

  • Love 1
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I was amazed to discover that not only was this movie playing in my city in the Bible Belt, it's also playing in our smaller redneck-y sister city (pop. 28,000). And there didn't appear to be any fundies protesting outside, which I more than half expected.

  • Love 2
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I loved it! And I gotta say it was one of the most engaged audiences I’ve ever seen at a theater. They cheered at the kiss at the end and when the drama teacher took down the bullies. Lots of laughter and stone silence and sniffles during the scenes with Simon’s parents at the end.

 

I thought the cast was great from top to bottom. I might go see it again! I have MoviePass so it’s basically free haha

  • Love 6
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On 3/20/2018 at 4:05 PM, Silver Raven said:

The author of the book has a book about the Leah character coming out next month.  I wonder if the support that Love, Simon is getting will make the producers immediately pick it up as a "sequel".

Interesting. I spent a good portion of the movie thinking Leah was "blue" and that she had a crush on Abby (which was why she was so uncomfortable seeing Abby in that costume and when they were dancing together) before I remembered blue's crush on Jon Snow.

  • Love 1
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I loved the book and so want to see this. But all my friends think its a sappy rom com and won't go and this isn't a movie you can see alone. *grumble*

I'm thrilled to see all the positive reviews and praise though.

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6 hours ago, Couver said:

I loved the book and so want to see this. But all my friends think its a sappy rom com and won't go and this isn't a movie you can see alone. *grumble*

I'm thrilled to see all the positive reviews and praise though.

I agree with Bruinsfan, I went alone also (for similar reasons), but the atmosphere of the crowd was like we were all there for the same party.  It was great. 

  • Love 5
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On 3/23/2018 at 11:47 AM, Couver said:

I loved the book and so want to see this. But all my friends think its a sappy rom com and won't go and this isn't a movie you can see alone. *grumble*

I'm thrilled to see all the positive reviews and praise though.

The only reason to skip seeing the movie alone is if you feel uncomfortable (mainly for reasons of safety) being in the area of the movie theatre alone. I go to all sorts of movie alone all the time and it's not a big deal at all. I'm an adult. I've been to see Disney/Pixar movies alone and no one called the police. It's really not a big deal. Go the movie and enjoy it. It's a great movie.  

Edited by Sarah 103
  • Love 10
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Thank you (all three of you) for the little nudge.

I went to see this earlier today and loved it! It was nice to see a decent crowd too considering Black Panther, Pacific Rim, and a Wrinkle in Time are all also still in theatres.

They changed a decent amount from the book (the biggest one was the total removal of the older Spier's sister). But I have to say that none of the changes hurt the movie and the film still kept to the spirit of the book. I also liked some of the new/different additions the movie made from the book. The Ethan character was wonderful and didn't have a book counterpart that I could recall. It was nice to see a variety of gay characters reflected in this. The cast had great chemistry together particularly the group of core friends.

The best part for me was the people in the audience who hadn't read the book and had been thrown off by the misdirect with Bram and were just ecstatic when he showed up at the end. So many aww's it was just really cute.

I think this year movies are doing a really good job showing how important representation is on a variety of levels. I was just caught so many times in moments thinking where was this movie when I was in high school? It captured so many feelings/emotions for me back then that really had no outlet because gay characters were only just starting to appear on tv/film and never in anything like this. It was bittersweet. But it was also really uplifting that despite a lot of what is currently going on in the world we have made progress and strides and not just for LGBT kids. The audience was mixed and I love that people in generally are being taught to be more tolerant, accepting and loving.

  • Love 11
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Glad you went, and enjoyed it! I meant to see it a second time this weekend, but furniture assembly and headaches have gotten in the way. Hopefully I can make it to the theater one night this week.

  • Love 1
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Saw it today (alone! How I see almost all movies!), and really enjoyed it. I had read the book a couple of years ago and had forgotten who Blue was, so I was surprised along with the rest of the theater. Btw, there's also a book about Abby's cousins, called "The Upside of Unrequited." Simon makes a cameo in that one.

  • Love 1
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16 hours ago, methodwriter85 said:

The movie had pretty decent legs and dropped only 33%. It's currently standing at 23 million, which means it's made back it's production budget already. Good. It's not a huge hit but it's doing decently.

If it makes another $11 million or so, it'll pass Paper Towns and Everything, Everything at the box office and cross from the ranks of so-so teen romances into the ones that are fondly remembered as successes. I think it can probably do that over the next two-and-a-half weeks.

  • Love 1
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6 hours ago, Bruinsfan said:

If it makes another $11 million or so, it'll pass Paper Towns and Everything, Everything at the box office and cross from the ranks of so-so teen romances into the ones that are fondly remembered as successes. I think it can probably do that over the next two-and-a-half weeks.

Let's hope. Mid-30's doesn't seem unreasonable now that it seems like it's not going to be front-loaded like Paper Towns was.

Paper Towns did okay- the problem is that it came from the same team that made The Fault in Our Stars, and Cara Delevigne was supposed to be the next big thing. It was expected to be a sizeable hit- not to the level of The Fault in Our Stars, but I feel like it was expected to at least hit 50 million during its run. I also feel like they did a shit ton of promotion for Paper Towns, way more than they did for Love Simon.

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20 hours ago, Bruinsfan said:

If it makes another $11 million or so, it'll pass Paper Towns and Everything, Everything at the box office and cross from the ranks of so-so teen romances into the ones that are fondly remembered as successes. I think it can probably do that over the next two-and-a-half weeks.

Here's hoping. It seems to have been received well by critics too. I haven't seen anyone tearing it apart.

I actually really liked Everything, Everything. The love story was cute. It just had such a dark angle to it because of what the mother did.

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Got to see this today, after reading the book in one afternoon last week, and enjoyed it. The only downside had nothing to do with the movie itself, but rather the elderly couple at the back of the theater who were extremely hard of hearing and spent the entire movie explaining to each other what was happening onscreen. In their outside voices. ("Oh, so he's Blue? I thought it was the other kid." "What?")

Anyway, that aside, I thought it was a good little movie. I understand that books have to be changed to some degree to work onscreen, and I thought for the most part that everything worked well. My only real gripe is that in pumping up the focus on some of the other students, the character of Blue suffered. His email conversations with Simon were reduced to the point that I never really felt like Simon or the audience really got to know Blue at all. I would've rather they left out the musical number (which had to have taken quite a bit of time to choreograph and film) and given those few minutes of screen time time to Blue and Simon instead.

I wasn't entirely sure about Nick Robinson (somehow the Simon I pictured in my head was more like Tom "Spiderman" Holland as I read the book) but he really impressed me by the end, and especially in the scenes with his parents post-coming out. In an unrelated note, how old am I that I can remember when Josh Duhamel was the new young heartthrob? Sheesh. Also, would a high school drama club really be allowed to put on something as potentially racy as Cabaret?

Overall, a lot of fun, and now I want to reread the book again.

  • Love 1
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(edited)
On 3/29/2018 at 7:38 PM, Maelstrom said:

Also, would a high school drama club really be allowed to put on something as potentially racy as Cabaret?

Well, it was Oliver Twist in the book, which is a lot more likely. I did think it was interesting that in the book, despite being blackmailed, Simon basically did nothing wrong. He only invited Martin along to a couple of events rather than pushing Abby toward him and telling lies to keep her and Nick apart. And Book Leah threw an angry hissyfit and started cold-shouldering Simon over the horrible crime of saying yes when Abby and Nick invited him—but not her—out to dinner, which really made her seem like a selfish, melodramatic bitch. Leah and Martin were made much more sympathetic characters in the script while Simon himself was made considerably more selfish and unsympathetic, which seems an odd choice to me.

Edited by Bruinsfan
  • Love 4
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Love, Simon opened here in Australia over the weekend. The same week as Ready Player One and A Wrinkle In Time. Ready Player One took the crown but check out what Love, Simon achieved in Australia

4 New Love, Simon $916,697 218 screens $4,205 average

6 New A Wrinkle in Time $650,835 314 screens $2,073 average

Never in a million years would I have thought Love, Simon would have out grossed AWIT opening week. I would say that I saw more promotion on Australian media for Wrinkle over Simon. In fact, I had no idea Nick and Katherine were even in Australia to promote the movie.

I saw Simon on the weekend and absolutely loved it, I plan to see it again this weekend. And I will share my full thoughts after my second viewing.

  • Love 1
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Finally got to see it over the weekend.  Definitely got a little sniffly at points.  My husband, who I thought had just come along to humor me, told me he'd really enjoyed it as well.  He also felt that Bram was the superior choice out of all the potential Blues.

I think my favorite was the exasperated drama teacher.

Alonso Duralde, a film critic who hosts a movie review podcast with his husband (also a film critic) said that the end hit him like a done of bricks because he realized that this is what "Jake Ryan in the Porsche" felt like for straight people.  Yeah, who knew the world needed a gay John Hughes movie.

  • Love 7
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The thing that's actually suck with me the most over the week since I saw it is not the sweet, fluffy romance, nor the wonderful scenes with the parents, but his angry confrontation with Martin.  "I'm the one who's supposed to decide when and how and who knows and how I get to say it--that's supposed to be my thing!"  I can't imagine anything worse for a queer kid than losing control of his/her own story.  I didn't, exactly, and don't regret how things happened for me, but I wonder know if 17 year-old-me should have tried something else.

Simon being honest about his manipulations of Abby, Nick, and Leah being due to do, not so much wanting to be outed but because he knew if he was, he would lose Blue showed a fair amount of maturity.  I can't help thinking that most kids would have deflected more of the blame onto the out-er.

Apparently Cal, the piano player, is bisexual in the book, and develops feelings for Simon, but I'm glad they didn't complicate the narrative of the movie that way.  That just invites shipper wars, and that's no one's friend.

  • Love 7
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12 hours ago, starri said:

Apparently Cal, the piano player, is bisexual in the book, and develops feelings for Simon, but I'm glad they didn't complicate the narrative of the movie that way.  That just invites shipper wars, and that's no one's friend.

Yeah. I didn't read the book but I got spoiled by reading the Wikipedia posts, and I kept hoping that they changed Blue to being Cal because I really, really liked him and Kenyan Lionsdale doesn't really do it for me. I'm sure there's "Simcal" fanfic being written as we speak, though.

Love, Simon is now standing at 37 million. 40 million looks like a really realistic goal and I'm glad. That puts it at a pretty good box office haul for a teen movie.

I got my first gay friends when I was 15 by talking online, and my siblings knew by the time I was 14/15. I also went to a pretty liberal school, but I still wasn't widely out because I felt like I'd be expected to date the effeminate and open gays at the school. The homophobic prank reminds me of the kind of thing I was worried about.

  • Love 2
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18 hours ago, starri said:

Apparently Cal, the piano player, is bisexual in the book, and develops feelings for Simon, but I'm glad they didn't complicate the narrative of the movie that way.  That just invites shipper wars, and that's no one's friend.

In the book, Cal is friendly to Simon during play rehearsals (and Simon thinks that he's cute) but nothing really happens between them. They have a few short one on one conversations during rehearsal but they're never totally alone just the two of them. At one rehearsal when everyone is messing around instead of rehearsing, they have chair races in the hallway and Simon and Cal are paired together so Cal has his hands on Simon's shoulders (which is thrilling for Simon). Simon begins to wonder if Cal is Blue so he makes a pointed remark that references a discussion that Simon and Blue had over email and Cal doesn't react at all.

After Simon is outed, Cal tells him that he's bi and says they should hang out some time but it never goes further than that, which is due to Simon choosing not to pursue Cal because at that point he's already in love with Blue.

I just read the book this weekend so now I can't wait to see the movie!

  • Love 2
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I finally got to see this last night, and I really enjoyed it a lot.  I'll have to look for the book!

It did put me in mind of Never Been Kissed at the end, with Simon on the Ferris Wheel -- I just kept thinking of Drew Barrymore on the pitcher's mound, waiting for Mr. Coulson.

On 4/8/2018 at 10:57 AM, starri said:

The thing that's actually suck with me the most over the week since I saw it is not the sweet, fluffy romance, nor the wonderful scenes with the parents, but his angry confrontation with Martin.  "I'm the one who's supposed to decide when and how and who knows and how I get to say it--that's supposed to be my thing!"  I can't imagine anything worse for a queer kid than losing control of his/her own story.  I didn't, exactly, and don't regret how things happened for me, but I wonder know if 17 year-old-me should have tried something else.

That scene stuck with me, too, and I really felt for Simon.  Martin was an asshole in oh so many ways, but outing Simon was the worst.

  • Love 1
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(edited)

Man, the Tony Hale character made me cringe -- every time he was onscreen, I just wanted to yell "WTF is WRONG with you?!"

I loved everyone else, though -- well, not Martin.

On 3/26/2018 at 9:37 PM, methodwriter85 said:

... Cara Delevingne was supposed to be the next big thing.

Seriously? Well, not that I don't believe you -- but her actually being the next anything seems vanishingly unlikely to me.

Edited by Sandman
Edited for clarity.
  • Love 2
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On 6/3/2018 at 11:13 PM, Sandman said:

Man, the Tony Hale character made me cringe -- every time he was onscreen, I just wanted to yell "WTF is WRONG with you?!"

Oh thank God I'm not the only one. When he was insecurely trying to walk back his earlier comparison between Simon and himself after the outing I wanted to throw my chair through the screen. Way to support a kid who's going through a traumatic experience, you self-absorbed Pee-wee Herman-looking douchenozzle!

  • Love 8
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18 hours ago, Bruinsfan said:

Oh thank God I'm not the only one. When he was insecurely trying to walk back his earlier comparison between Simon and himself after the outing I wanted to throw my chair through the screen. Way to support a kid who's going through a traumatic experience, you self-absorbed Pee-wee Herman-looking douchenozzle!

Exactly. He was just so creepy -- and he turned out to be a spineless worm!

  • Love 2
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At first I thought he was just going to be harmless comedic relief but I have to agree with the rest of you that it came off inappropriate. A lot of the things he was saying to the students would not fly with any parents if they found out.

  • Love 4
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On 6/4/2018 at 12:13 AM, Sandman said:

Seriously? Because that seems vanishingly unlikely to me.

It definitely is now, but 2015-2016 they were really trying hard to push her.

Anyway. Joey Pollari- beautiful guy and I loved his work on American Crime Story, but wow did he not look teenaged at all. He was cutely boyish at 18/19 but early 20's maturation hit the dude hard.

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Martin gives the audience a hint about the reveal about halfway through the movie.  He makes a fairly off-color joke asking "What do you get when someone is black and Jewish," with a punchline of "Bluish."

  • Love 1
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So am I the only one that thinks Nick, Abby, and Leah were being a little too hard on Simon? He had just been outed in the cruelest, humiliating way, and they turned their backs on them when he needed them the most.

I know what he did was wrong, and I get Abby's outrage over feeling like a piece of meat to be passed around, but he was being BLACKMAILED for God's sake! And he wasn't just trying to protect himself he was trying to protect Blue too. Besides, Nick and Abby had already gotten together by that point, it just seems kind of petty they'd be mad at Simon for preventing them from getting together sooner. Leah being mad at Simon because 1) she was in love with him and 2) he didn't come out to her first was even pettier.

Oh, and because it's never said enough, Martin was the worst. Reminded me unpleasantly of Xander Harris (who, I might add, pulled a similar stunt threatening to out Amy as a witch so she'd help him get back at an ex)

  • Love 8
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On April 4, 2018 at 11:51 PM, Bruinsfan said:

Well, it was Oliver Twist in the book, which is a lot more likely. I did think it was interesting that in the book, despite being blackmailed, Simon basically did nothing wrong. He only invited Martin along to a couple of events rather than pushing Abby toward him and telling lies to keep her and Nick apart. And Book Leah threw an angry hissyfit and started cold-shouldering Simon over the horrible crime of saying yes when Abby and Nick invited him—but not her—out to dinner, which really made her seem like a selfish, melodramatic bitch. Leah and Martin were made much more sympathetic characters in the script while Simon himself was made considerably more selfish and unsympathetic, which seems an odd choice to me.

Gonna have to disagree with that. What Simon did was wrong but Martin was the bigger asshole by a thousand miles. I did feel some sympathy for him during the homecoming debacle and how everyone made fun of it for it, but that sympathy was GONE after what he did to Simon.

As for Leah, while I get why she was hurt, I still kind of felt that she made Simon's outing all about her and her feelings.

  • Love 3
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What Simon in the movie did was wrong (thought not really all that horrible, on the scale of teenage meddling), but about the only sin you can accuse him of in the book is not saying "Hey Abby, I'm inviting this Martin guy along with us because he has a crush on you and is blackmailing me." He did basically nothing to help Martin other than allowing him to be present.

  • Love 2
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Just saw it on DVD. Oy vay.  Have not read the book, so I'm just going on what I saw in the movie.

Early on, when we see Simon and his friends on the way to school (and clearly this is an affluent neighborhood, or that is a prep school, must be nice), and my first thought is "Wait, what are these 20-somethings doing going to high school?", I knew I was going to have trouble suspending disbelief. 

And when everyone starts talking in that too cool for school, super hip way--even the parents, who BTW were more like their kids buddies than their parents, because this entire film takes place in an alternate reality--I gave up trying. 

I think this film would be perfectly fine and worthwhile for teens and early twenties. Its message that "gay is okay," and that we should all get along (and look! we do get along! Black! White! Gay! Straight!) is not the worst message in the world for young impressionable minds. But I would not inflict it on any of my friends. Then again I'm way outside the target age range for this movie.

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On 3/29/2018 at 7:38 PM, Maelstrom said:

Also, would a high school drama club really be allowed to put on something as potentially racy as Cabaret?

My high school did in the 90’s.

 

I just watched the movie and really liked it.  There was some cheesy “writers trying to be clever” dialogue....but for the most part it was very well done.  Of course they had to throw in a Trump dig when Blue said he was Obama hoping Trump wouldn’t ruin his legacy....but I come to expect that in most movies these days.  I thought it was good casting and great chemistry between the actors.

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Love Simon has been out for only a little over a week here in germany. Tuesday is reduced prices night (ticket was 6€) and the cinema just reopened a few weeks ago after part of it had burnt down in January. It's the only cinema in a big radius so people are generally hungry for the experience and it's packed.

Imagine my disappointment when the movie started and I was still the only person in the cinema. Generally I would have been thrilled, but it's so sad to see how hard a time movies with gay leads seem to have finding an audience. Five minutes into the movie three more people walked in. So I guess that was something.

Now, looking it up, the movie seems to have done well enough, with it's relatively low budget and probably rather small marketing budget. So that's nice.

Truth is, it's a hard genre to make profitable these days and it probably had little to do with the sexuality of the lead. I usually wouldn't have gone and seen this kind of film in the theater either. I'm really too old for that stuff. But you gotta show Hollywood that people don't have a problem with gay leads, so I bought a ticket. I was pleasently surprised. I really loved the film.

I often think it should not matter what sexuality the lead in a movie has, but then I watch a movie that has a gay man as the central protagonist and I understand it does matter. It matters a lot to me. Pretty much every time I see a movie with a gay man as the focus, I get to reflect on a different aspect of myself. I wonder if straight people have that, too.

Before I came out I like Simon didn't really have to fear that my close family would reject me. Yet it was still hard and it took me a while. Sometimes it is still hard. When is the right time to tell people? Do I just run around screaming "I'm gay?". Generally I'd like more people to know. I'm usually assumed to be straight and it feels like people don't know the whole me. Then again, some people I'd rather they don't know. And in general I find me being gay kinda hard to talk about. Like it's still not normal to me.

I'm not sure if I follow Simon's conclusion that it's just hard to show people who you really are because what if they don't like you. I have to think on that.

 

On 18.3.2018 at 9:18 PM, Black Knight said:

Saw this with a friend yesterday and we both loved it. It's exactly what it's been said to be, a John Hughes movie with a gay teen as the protagonist. The cast is great. I wish they'd included a little more of Simon and Blue's conversation from the book at the end, but it was adorable all the same.

But with a way better ending. All John Hughes movies I've seen had horrible endings. First and foremost the breakfast club, a movie I loved for 99% and then despised for the last 1%.

 

On 22.3.2018 at 9:42 PM, SNeaker said:

Interesting. I spent a good portion of the movie thinking Leah was "blue" and that she had a crush on Abby (which was why she was so uncomfortable seeing Abby in that costume and when they were dancing together) before I remembered blue's crush on Jon Snow.

I didn't think she was blue, but I was sure she had a crush on Abby. I still don't see any other explaination for her getting all flustered when Abby showed up in the wonder woman costume.

So when she kinda sorta confessed her love to Simon and Simon thought she was talking about Nick, I thought she was talking about Abby and I thought "neat those twwo childhood friends can be gay together. well not together-together, but together". Would have added to the movie, I think.

 

On 26.3.2018 at 3:10 AM, Couver said:

The best part for me was the people in the audience who hadn't read the book and had been thrown off by the misdirect with Bram and were just ecstatic when he showed up at the end. So many aww's it was just really cute.

I was too, because I wasn't in crime solving mode, I was just along for the ride. Otherwise my knowledge of procedurals would have told me, that it's always the first guy they think it is. They just dismiss him at first, but come back around at the end of the episode. (although they have been mixing it up recently).

 

On 30.3.2018 at 2:38 AM, Maelstrom said:

My only real gripe is that in pumping up the focus on some of the other students, the character of Blue suffered. His email conversations with Simon were reduced to the point that I never really felt like Simon or the audience really got to know Blue at all.

The problem is that film is a visual medium and that would not have been cinematic enough. But they could have compensated by keeping Bram around more. He seemed to be pretty good freinds with our core group at the beginning of the movie, but after the party he pretty much fell off the face of the earth. Had he been more in the movie, we could have pieced together his character, after it was revealed that he and Blue were the same person.

 

On 18.6.2018 at 12:47 AM, adhoc said:

Early on, when we see Simon and his friends on the way to school (and clearly this is an affluent neighborhood, or that is a prep school, must be nice), and my first thought is "Wait, what are these 20-somethings doing going to high school?", I knew I was going to have trouble suspending disbelief. 

I mean Simon has wrinkles on his forehead I just now started to develop in my early 30s, but that only got a light chuckle out of me. It didn't take me out of the movie. I take it you never watched 90210?

  • Love 3
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