Love Simon Vs Simon and the Homo Sapiens Agenda: Book and Movie Review WITH SPOILERS

I have always loved reading, and I have always been the type of person to insist on reading the book before watching the movie.  There have only been a few instances in which I have knowingly broken that rule, one of which was when "Love Simon" came out.  For those of you who don't know "Love Simon" is the movie adaptation for the young adult novel "Simon vs The Homo Sapiens Agenda," written by Becky Albertalli.  And, in case you really have been living under a rock for the past year, here's a brief summary.  It's a gay high school love story.  Now, if you didn't know that much, I suggest you stop reading here.  This review will contain spoilers.  If you have only watched the movie, and intend on still reading the book, I suggest you stop reading.  If you have only read the book and still need to watch the movie, seriously, for your own good, stop reading.  Come back once you have consumed all you want to of this book and movie world.

Now that you have been fairly warned, lets get started.  I saw "Love Simon" pretty much as soon as it came out in theaters last year.  For the past couple of years, my reading game has not been the best, and I knew I wouldn't have time to read the book before it came out in theaters, so I gave myself permission to break my self imposed "read the book first" rule.  When I first saw the movie, I thought it was amazing.  The struggle with identity was something I related to.  I loved the way the high school was portrayed, and I really liked how they put as much effort into the side characters as they did the main characters.  As deep as the subject matter was, it was still lighthearted, and it left me with that giddy after-contemporary movie feeling.

And then, last month, I finally read the book.  It was definitely a different experience reading the book after having watched the movie.  Even though it had been a year since I'd watched the movie, I remembered just enough that I was able to imagine the book even better while I was reading it.  Still, since it had been a year, there were some parts of the movie that were a bit fuzzy, so reading the book helped to fill in some of those gaps.  And, honestly, having that mix of what little I remembered of the movie with the full story of the book was the perfect combination.

But then I had to go and ruin it by watching the movie again.  This is where the disappointment begins.  For starters, remember how there were some aspects of the movie that I didn't remember?  Well, that included some of the characters.  Even though I had seen the movie once, I had forgotten what some of the side characters looked like.  That prompted the usual disappointment I experience when watching book to movie adaptations, when the characters don't look as I imagined them to look while reading.

My second issue with the movie is also fairly standard of book to movie adaptations.  I did not like the ways they changed or omitted certain details that were included in the book.  For instance, in the book Simon's younger sister was not a chef.  In the movie, they made that some quirky quality of the sister to make her different from everyone else's younger teenage sister.  In the book, she was just a normal teenage girl with mood swings.  The normalcy that was given to her in the book did more to enhance the family dynamic than her making terrible food all of the time.  I actually feel like the only reason they made her a terrible teenage cook in the movie was to make Simon look like the world's best brother for putting up with her.  In the book she was her own character, while in the movie she was only there to make her brother look better.  Also, in the movie, they completely wrote out Simon's older sister, Alice.  While she wasn't in the book that much, I felt that she completed Simon's family dynamic.  She was the older college sister that hid the fact that she was in a relationship when she came home to visit.  She was a place of safety for Simon when he was outed on the school's social media over winter break.  And I can't leave out the final scene in the book where Alice arranged for Simon and Brett to have the house alone for a couple of hours.  I think we all can be a little envious of a sister like that.  There were also some smaller details that the movie changed that were absolutely pointless.  For instance, Simon's email in the book was "hourtohour.notetonote" which I though was deep and meaningful, but for some reason it was changed in the movie to be "frommywindow," which just doesn't have the same ring to it.  What was even the point to changing his email?  As far as I can tell, there was none.

I also much preferred the pacing in the book, rather than the movie.  It certainly makes since why I would prefer the way the book was paced out, over the movie.  You can't reasonably fit in 300 pages of material into a 2 hour movie and include every last detail.  But it wasn't until I read the book, and then watched the movie again after, that I realized that the pacing of the movie was wildly unrealistic and so overly dramatic.  In the book Martin never released the screenshots of Simon and Blue's email's on the school's Tumblr page.  He had only posted an anonymous hyper sexual comment that was meant to impersonate Simon and which outed him to the whole school.  In the book, when that post was first made, he still had his friends.  He didn't fall out with them in quite the same way that he did in the movie.  Sure, when Abby found out he had tried to set her up with Martin for his own preservation, she was upset, but she quickly understood why he did it and chose to forgive him.  Likewise, Leah was a bit hurt that Simon had come out to Abby, rather than her first.  Just typical high school stuff.  The thing is, whatever angst arose, it was handled quickly.

One last thing that I preferred in the book was how sexually honest it was.  Becky Albertalli does a fantastic job with normalizing the process of arousal and sexual attraction.  There's this one scene where, in their email correspondence, Blue mentions that he likes to imagine Simon fantasizing about sex. Right after that, Simon is described masturbating.  It's done in a classy, yet very obvious way that does not cast shame or sex negativity. The way that Albertalli described the arousal process was very matter of fact.  It wasn't isolating or embarrassing; it just was.  My hope is that this helps youth that are beginning to experience sexual arousal realize that their bodies, and their arousal is completely normal and nothing to be ashamed about.

To conclude, I loved both the book and the movie, just not together.  I thought the movie was amazing before I read the book, and I still think it's pretty great.  I believe it tells the same story as the book does, which for book to movie adaptations is a feat in and of itself.  I just personally think that the book told the story better.  I preferred the way some of the characters were portrayed in the book rather than in the movie, and I generally preferred the way that some of the events played out in the book as opposed to how they did in the movie.  Not to mention, the sexually honest nature of the book really did wonders for selling it to me.  In my opinion, the book was better, but as far as book to movie adaptations go, I am still very impressed.

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