Narration Research: Love, Simon

 Love, Simon is an LGBTQ+ centered film, but the difference between this film and what I'm going for in my film is that Love, Simon creates a sense of otherness to people who aren't heterosexual. This is evident within the first couple minutes of the narration script.

I'm just like you.

For the most part,

my life is totally normal.

My dad was the annoyingly

handsome quarterback

who married

the hot valedictorian.

And, no, they didn't peak

in high school.

I have a sister

I actually like.

Not that I'd ever

tell her that.

And last year,

and 200 episodes

of Chopped ago...

she decided

she wanted to be a chef.

Which means we're pretty much

all her test subjects now.

And then

there's my friends.

Two of them, I've known

since pretty much

the beginning of time.

One of them,

I just met a few months ago,

but it feels

like I've known her forever.

We do everything friends do.

We drink way too much

iced coffee,

watch bad '90s movies

and hang out at Waffle House

dreaming of college

and gorging on carbs.

So, like I said.

I'm just like you.

I have a totally,

perfectly normal life.

Except I have

one huge-ass secret.

This narration focuses so much on trying to convey Simon as "normal" that we don't get too much insight into who he really is as a person. This affects the film as it continues though because Simon isn't a full rounded character, most of the time his character feels very bland, which is evident from the minimal characterization he gets at the beginning of the film.

Again, the purpose of my film is to depict being a part of the LGBTQ+ community as normal and create a light-hearted film about a teenage girl finding love (just not heterosexual love). Love, Simon doesn't have this same vision as my film and I probably won't use most of its script since it tries to define Simon's otherness, but I like how it talks about what he does with his friends, so I might incorporate this.

It has a similarity to Clueless where when he says "Except I have one huge-ass secret", it doesn't tell us what this is, but visually shows us and allows us to assume what this secret is. I like Cluess' and Love, Simon's scripts better than Kissing Booth for this reason (Kissing Booth spells out everything for the viewer while the other two allow more room for viewers to interpret, which makes this more entertaining for a viewer).