Film Review: The Good Half is Heartfelt and Beautiful
Review by Yising Kao
The Good Half tells a story about Renn (Nick Jonas) and his sister, Leigh (Brittany Snow), who have to cope after losing their mother to cancer. I was so excited to watch it in Los Angeles on July 23rd with director Robert Schwartzman and Brittany Snow, who introduced the film. This film, written by Brett Ryland, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival last year and has received positive reviews. As an avid Jonas Brothers fan and lover of earnest storytelling and sentimental films, I’ve been eager to watch The Good Half!
This film does an amazing job of showing how people grieve in different ways. Renn struggles with not wanting to confront his mother’s death, or else he’ll have to actually acknowledge that it’s real and he has to deal with his emotions of grief and guilt. He closes himself up and pushes his sister away by not answering her calls. Many people who have experienced loss can relate to how it might be difficult to open up to your family about how you’re processing grief. On his way back home to Cleveland for his mother’s funeral, Renn meets a woman named Zoe (Alexandra Shipp), and he hangs out with her as a way to escape what he’s dealing with, before realizing that he needs to admit that he’s not coping well.
Credit: The Ranch Productions / The Good Half
Nick Jonas blew me away with his performance. He played his character flawlessly, incorporating how Renn tries to be lighthearted while preparing for the funeral, avoiding how heartbroken he is, to eventually being able to open up towards his loved ones. I started crying when he shared a memory of his mother at her funeral (my friend brought tissues so we were prepared). This film stitches together flashback memories of Renn with his mother, Lily, with the present moments, in a beautiful and heartfelt way. I also love how this film incorporates the title into one of the scenes and expands on what “the good half” means to the characters.
I admire how The Good Half focuses a lot of Renn and Leigh’s sibling relationship. They aren’t affectionate towards each other and don’t try to comfort each other when they first see each other after Renn finds out about his mother’s death, which is unexpected. Renn and Leigh have to communicate their feelings as a way to cope with their mother’s death, and learn how to be there for each other instead of shutting each other out. In the Q&A, Schwartzman shared, “This journey together is kind of for them to open up to each other and be vulnerable.” There’s one scene where Leigh breaks down crying, which made me tear up. It expresses how grief comes in waves – one second, you can feel like you’re fine but the next, something reminds you of whom you lost, and it completely takes over you.
Schwartzman and Jonas met through a mutual music producer and have been friends for a long time. They spoke about how making music can be similar to filming a movie. Schwartzman spoke about the metaphor and how Jonas being a musician has intertwined with his acting in The Good Half - “The edit is just like being in the studio making a record. His (Jonas) comedic timing is great and I think his musical sensibility gives him that comedic timing. Theres a certain thing it takes to be performing every night and be inf front of an audience and create music. I think the life he’s lived as a musician has really a huge influence on his ability to pick up on the emotions of what it means to like, embody a character and how to give a great performance.”
Jonas added to the comparison of working in the music and film industries, “At times they're very similar and at times they're very different. On one hand, I think that its even more collaborative on a film set you’ve got obviously your other actors and director, department heads. Everybody is contributing to that experience and that final product. And in the studio, in my experience its three or four people, maybe five max. So it’s a sort of like an even more intimate and high stakes experience, or something. On a film set, you can lean on others. But there’s that moment where it’s like you, the director, and DP living in that moment. And that is very similar to being in the studio and trying to make that magic kind of moment that transcends what happened in the room to create it. I'm really fortunate that I get to do both. And to be a part of something with others that gets brought into the world and hopefully impacts peoples’ lives, is an incredible honor.”
On playing Renn, Jonas mentioned, “I always imagined that the Zoe character was maybe in his mind, his imagination. That was kind of the way that I played those scenes, ‘cause he could be kind of a different person with her than he could be the rest of the time. And it was his escape from the darkness of losing his mother, the pain of that and just coming home under those circumstances.”
The Good Half is a wonderful film – Although it deals with a devastating subject matter, it’s mixed with a couple of lighthearted moments and it’s a film that people who have dealt with loss in some way can genuinely connect to. Since the film was only released in theaters for only two days, I hope it will be released in the future because I would watch it again.
Brittany Snow shares her favorite part about filming The Good Half with us!