Funny, sweet, and by all means deeply heartfelt- Love, Victor is bound to have you laughing and crying till the very end, in a very good, but not perfect spinoff, of the fantastic film Love, Simon. I have to admit at first I was quite skeptical of the series, I had seen the trailer, and didn't think it was going to be much. I've seen Love, Simon countless times since its release in 2018, and it has become easily one of my favorite films of the last decade, so I thought this could not nearly meet the expectations I wanted for it. However, although that fact was still somewhat true, I was delighted to see how much humanity they could put into a spinoff of one of my favorite films, and was often delighted to watch it throughout. The premise of the show, isn't anything you haven't seen or heard of before, but even though the storyline may not be as unique as Love Simon's its character depth is often quite good. I always enjoyed watching the characters of Victor, Mia, and Felix on screen- and found it quite impressive how much the show developed their characters as time went on, and how much effort was put into doing so. Felix was most notably my favorite character of the show, as I find his personality a lot similar to my own, and found it touching to see someone so weird and so caring on screen. His (Anthony Turpel) character I felt was very unique, and not something you see often in this type of thing, so it was always refreshing to his interactions throughout the show. Victor (Michael Cimino) also gives quite a great performance throughout the show, and we can see that circumstances for these type of things are not easy as for some as they are for others. I liked this take and view on the story, and was glad they went that direction. I was also overjoyed to see the callbacks to Simon (Nick Robinson), and his subtle voice appearances throughout the episodes, which honestly made me quite overjoyed to see his involvement with the franchise is still present as well as Keiynan Lonsdale who played Bram. The show can be a bit cheesy at times, as well as formulaic, and is notably more so towards the beginning. It's characters of Lake and Andrew often feel incredibly cliche and they make light of this fact in the show, but it can't help but feel like you are watching useless characters as they are on screen. I did enjoy the touching romance between Lake and Felix on the show, but I felt Bebe Wood's performance as Lake was a bit overdone as well as Andrew's as it just all felt a bit wooden. The pilot is exactly what you expect it to be, as well as most of the third episode, which was kinda a bummer, considering they had a lot more to work with rather than just putting it all crammed together in the end, but the final few episodes are incredibly touching, heartbreaking, and emotional to watch, and watching it all together, I wouldn't want it any other way.
My Rating: 8.75/10
