Love, Simon knows its way to a teenagers heart: through a high school musical theater production.

As a gay coming-of-age story made by a top-tier Hollywood studio, Greg Berlantis endearing movie, which opened in theaters last weekend, is a rarity. Love, Simon lets its titular protagonist (Nick Robinson) find romance via tropes that define the John Hughesian rom-coms fashionable in the 1980s and 90s a genre long limited to heterosexual characters. Among many queer selling points is Simon and his classmates deliciously disastrous rendition of Cabaret, rife with the subpar vocal talent, ditzy choreography and infinite passion seen in many an adolescent theater spectacle.

Just as Saoirse Ronan and Lucas Hedges schlepped through Merrily We Roll Along in last years Lady Bird , Robinson, Alexandra Shipp, Logan Miller and other young actors of Love, Simon welcome us to Cabaret with all of their characters amateurish might. Its only fitting that their exhausted theater teacher, played by Insecure scene-stealer Natasha Rothwell, has to remind them that the musicals setting 1931 Germany wasnt as affable a place as their school auditorium. Youre Nazis! More anger, she barks in a line Rothwell improvised, breaking up two cast members caught smooching during rehearsal.