Review: Love, Simon (2018)

Who has two thumbs and went to the cinema twice in two weeks? This gal! No, I can’t believe it either. Thanks to my amazing husband for pushing me to actually leave the house and my bestie for being my date! This week was a movie we’d both been really looking forward to and the rave reviews just made us even more excited. Love, Simon might just be the best Rom-Com of 2018 and we’re not even halfway there yet.

Simon (Nick Robinson) is your average teenager. He has two loving parents, a sister who he actually gets on with but wouldn’t dream of telling her and, well actually Simon does a pretty good job of explaining his life in the opening narrative so I won’t take that away from him. Thing is, Simon has a huge secret that no one knows – he’s gay.

Simon’s school has a gossip blog and one day a confession post is published by an author titled as Blue. Blue reveals that he is, in fact, gay, and so Simon creates an anonymous email profile to contact Blue and strike up a friendship which eventually leads to love. That’s the basic plot here, with plenty of other High School drama and antics thrown in here and there. It was so much fun trying to work out who Blue actually was and it was an amazing reveal at the end! I don’t know if it was obvious to anyone else but I never see these things coming.

It’s the characters that drive movies like these forward and separate the mediocre from the ones you’ll never forget, and the characters in Love, Simon are great. Even the ‘bad guy’ has lovable qualities and you can’t help but find him funny. I absolutely loved Tony Hale as the hilarious Vice Principal, in my favourite role of his since Arrested Development.

In fact, I think my only gripe with the entire movie was that it wasn’t quite angsty enough – but that’s just my own personal preference. There are sad moments for sure but everything still feels a bit sugar coated. Having said that though I think Love, Simon is a really important movie. I was reading through a few reviews on Letterboxd after seeing the movie and some movie fans were using their reviews as their own chance to come out, and I think if a movie can have that kind of positive effect on people then that’s an amazing thing.

What else I think is great is that it’s a movie for all to enjoy. It doesn’t feel like a movie made for the LGBT community, is accessible for all. If two married women approaching their 30’s (sorry Steph if you’re reading this) can enjoy it, then so can you! Love, Simon gets 4 and a half Halloween Oreos from me and gosh darn it I wish they were available in the UK, they sound delicious.

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Review: A Dog’s Purpose (2017)

As a movie blogger, I feel the need to have a ‘never say never’ kind of attitude when it comes to actually watching movies. I tell all my friends and family “If there’s ever something you want to see at the cinema and no-one will go with you, I will!”. That’s how I found myself watching Fast & Furious 5 with Jenna (having watched none in the series prior) and The Monuments Men with my husband (still haven’t forgiven him). It’s also how I wound up at the cinema last week with my Mum to see A Dog’s Purpose.

Why do we do this to ourselves? That’s what we asked each other while queuing for a cup of tea. We know this movie is going to make us cry, and yet we just can’t help ourselves. I don’t know whether to be thankful for the fact that the screen was fairly busy (more people crying to make me feel better) or full of shame because my Mum likes to choose the quiet moment to blow her nose.

If you don’t know already, A Dog’s Purpose is one dog’s story about trying to find meaning in his life. Or should I say lives, because in this world, when a dog dies he is brought back to life as a new born puppy. Say it with me now, ‘awww’.

The dog we get to follow is called Bailey, and we hear his thoughts through the ever entertaining Olaf LeFou Josh Gad. I’ve got to admit, anyone with a deep love for their own pet will find a lot of humour in Bailey’s commentary, especially if you’ve ever had an actual conversation with your dog, cat, parrot, or whatever you have.

Of course it made me cry. It would make even those with the coldest hearts tear up just slightly. I wasn’t timing it or anything, but I’m fairly sure there were 2 dog deaths within the first 10 minutes of the movie. If that’s not enough to get you, there’s a healthy dose of angst, domestic abuse and alcoholism that might tug on those heartstrings instead.

If you’ve seen the trailer, you’ve seen the whole movie, sadly. Bailey has a few other lives that are saved for the big screen itself, but the middle section of the movie is all just filler, leaving you waiting for the big reunion moment that you know is coming. It’s not a masterpiece movie, but it knows what it wants from it’s audience and it succeeds in that, so what more can you say!

I’ll tell you one last thing though, I’m fairly certain my Mum and I both went home and hugged our pets extra tight that night. It didn’t stop me from cursing my cats with every bad word invented when they hid a live bird from me of course, but for that evening, they were my favourite things in the world. In fact, can we have A Cat’s Purpose next year? Just follow the same principle, but make it an hour and a half of cats being a******s instead. I’ll watch that.

3 out of 5 bottles of Baileys from me. It’s clever, because that’s the dog’s name, but it also makes me sad because I haven’t touched alcohol since Christmas.