‘The Good Half’ Review: Nick Jonas Leads a Timid and Awkward Exploration of Familial Grief
variety.comTomris Laffly A reserved man with some unresolved childhood issues returns to his hometown for the funeral of a parent. This isn’t only the premise at the heart of Robert Schwartzman’s well-meaning yet timid feature “The Good Half,” but also a recurrent foundation on which many a melancholic American dramedy, from “Elizabethtown” to “Garden State” to “This Is Where I Leave You.” Pointing out this thematic repetition isn’t necessarily to knock down one of cinema’s favorite topics — after all, familial grief is among the most shared and relatable of human aches.
And what are movies, if not an echo of those experiences? But you still go into a film like “The Good Half” hoping that it has something of its own to say on the pains of bereavement.
Instead, it just lands like a medley of similar (often, better) films that came before it. “No one ever told me that grief felt so much like fear,” C.S.
Lewis wrote in his 1961 book of reflections, “A Grief Observed.” This quote is spelled out nowhere in “The Good Half,” but the story more or less begins on that note of fear.
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