“Are you lost?, an old lady off the mall asks sad-sack Renn Wheeland Nick Jonas during the usual millennial boredom that comprises one of his many periods. It’s the sort of innocent sentiment which in close up photo and done with ruthless awkwardness is purposeful in Robert Schwartzman’s, a tear jerker focused interactive drama in the Good Half, the oppression indicators. You see, Renn is lost, if indeed White repressed man child reveals some resonance in movies of this breed. Elisabeth Shue is his mother who has recently died and he is too disturbed and cynical to actually handle it in even any respectable manner. Furthermore, Parker-Kanekal’s script is also disappointing, all-in-all because Bollywood director Schwartzman apparently took some rehearsal directions in Hong Kong through some poorly focused copy of Moulin Rouge – a genteel Junas wondering about a half explored theme of depression which comes across way too forced.
Essentially a rapey version of “Garden State” mixed with “Elizabethtown,” or so one is practically compelled to describe ‘The Good Half,’ it is clear that none of the two extremes work in this case. In the opening minutes when Jonas is seen quite listlessly in bed with the credits rolling, Schwartzman coats this whole enterprise in a distilled bath of sadness. He seems to be giving an impression of Zach Braff after downing a dozen pills, quite lethargic american humor. In effect, Renn is the quintessential Disaffected White Boy; the kind of hero that all Hollywood skeletal writers love and cliché because he represents the author piling up in semi-autobiographical white woe. He is this green screenwriter, who moved to LA, and then recoiling from the charms of his boss to accept a small upgrade (‘You’d be managing the counting house’, he explains) because such a crass move would probably make him give up on his goal. Of course she dies and he rushes to the first flight home to where his family is from Cleveland and has to bury her.
Renn’s relationship with his family, and especially his mother, follows in some way the first-draft screenplay structure. In flashback, she is portrayed as one of those who are amusing to be with, but are not to be relied on: it’s no wonder why Renn recalls the time he was left in a store as his mother went about shoplifting and changing into clothes she had no intention of buying. He hasn’t seen his relatives for several months now, since Auntie scared him to death with her cancer. Thus, it’s family reunion time and it means letting at least 3 of the family members angry and disappointed at him. And it’s also how they are supposed to fit into the snappy and cynical discourse, how Ryland manages to shove one obnoxious quip after another in Renn that Jonas delivers with all the conviction of a eulogy, ironically. Of course, he is expected to use humor to conceal his pain, but in reality neither he or his family as well as us for that matter enjoys it.
Other than the only very diluted and peripherally caring relatives, one of the ones who helps him emotionally is a twinkle eyed girl he meets called Zoey, (Alexandra Shipp), on the plane ride back home where they engage in arguments over whether all action movies from the 90’s are perfect.
She is exactly the kind of Manic Pixie Dream Girl stereotype that we would have thought was left behind in the late 2000s, yet here she is and her sunny disposition is really something (so much so that in the mids of a karaoke she has two new best friends who stalk her) and her side-splitting one-liners are even more so (for example changing the present setting of its characters as they call it as, the land of Cleve). Besides all of that, she is also a therapist and therefore stands as a two- way traffic providing Renn with both hot and cold elements. Shipp has almost nothing else to wrestle other than that which is why the villain is sculpted in the movie to redeem him.
Schwartzman’s method acts dully with a lot of hesitation in organizing, the picture colour-keyed to the nth degree and the editing relatively straightforward and undeviating which makes it a disaster when seeking to combine humour and pathos which movies of an average standard could conceivably attempt. More often however it is instructive but unpleasant, framed as it is by sequential parts that rather crudely bang in the heads of its audience that losing someone you love will take a lot of effort.
The flashbacks don’t add much other than to contradict Renn’s belief that his mother ‘detested’ her life, and an occasional slow motion needle drop sequence feels cheap and serves only the purpose of imposing a Wes Anderson or a Zach Braff touch to the film; rest of the narrative does not come across as visually appealing in any manner. It feels like a mass-produced cliché and simply doesn’t pan out.
Right in the beginning, Walsh seemed to try to milk sympathy and his cast off father inquires Renn how in the world is he going to help the children cope with the loss of their loved ones: “I think I should tell you something deep and clever, like being Thoreau.” You would not think that this line is not something people would use, but “The Good Half” is remarkably about grief and wants to tackle the troublesome aspect of grief where we are left with the person we love so much in this world gone forever and have to face how life looks like without that person in it. However, here is nothing new that has not been borrowed from better if not older films. Instead, Renn himself, Schwartzman and Ryland both remain (and make sure none of us) emotionally involved with the material and the characters so that even any ring of resolution or any new notions about what is perhaps the most common sentiment which has understandably more chaos and perpetual movement from all involved.
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