Nick Jonas Leads an Awkward Indie Drama

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. The film starts with the young Renn Wheeland (Mason Cufari) and his idiosyncratic mother Lily (Elisabeth Shue, doing her best in an underwritten part) as she tries to comfort her son, whom she had just forgotten at a shopping mall. In the parking lot, she promises that she will never leave him in a store again. But Renn demands further reassurance. “You’ll never leave me? A hundred percent?,” he anxiously wants to know, unknowingly asking his mom to make a lifelong promise she knows she won’t be able to keep.

Fast-forward to a couple of decades later, and the older Renn (a detached and low-energy Nick Jonas) at long last receives the call that he’s feared his entire life, from his weeping sister: “She’s gone.” As Renn moves his way through the airport to head back home to Cleveland, a series of voicemails effectively inform audiences of where things stand for him. He’s an L.A.-based writer with a bill-paying job that he does not like, but is somehow getting a promotion at. His sister Leigh (a terrific Brittany Snow, underserved by the diffident film) could use his help with all that’s been going on. His dad Darren (Matt Walsh) got his own baggage, and so on. On the plane ride, the spirited Zoey (the endearing Alexandra Shipp of “Barbie”) — conveniently, a therapist — enters the picture much like Kirsten Dunst does in “Elizabethtown.” With a sharp sense of humor and a knack for quoting ‘80s and ‘90s Hollywood action one-liners, Zoey often infuses the film with a sunny disposition. But Shipp’s part nonetheless feels like a parade of cliches without much depth. Still, her character proves to be a welcome presence, lending Renn her company as he navigates his tricky situation with his family.

The drama between kin seems thoroughly commonplace, too. Apart from Renn’s overbearing and overburdened sibling Leigh — a character that Snow portrays with real bite — there is Lily’s irksome second husband Rick (David Arquette), along with various self-conscious moments at funeral parlors, heart-to-hearts at local watering holes and so on. Schwartzman and screenwriter Brett Ryland braid these present-day scenes with flashbacks in an attempt to deepen our understanding of Lily. But despite Shue’s best efforts, the film doesn’t really convey what makes her distinctive. The brief journeys back in time disclose the progression of Lily’s terminal illness and often reiterate that she had amusing quirks as a harmless kleptomaniac (sometimes pocketing objects like a teaspoon from a restaurant). But in its inelegant efforts to unearth situational humor out of those clumsy memories, the film unfortunately sidesteps real complexities and character revelations in the process.  

A Coppola descendant like his brother, Jason, and a multi-hyphenate film and music personality (best known as the lead vocalist of Rooney), Schwartzman directs “The Good Half” in a bland straightforward manner, without a discernible style of his own. Jonas, meanwhile, doesn’t seem to have the range of dramatic muscles to pull off the level of understated vulnerability his character demands. In that, he is often forgettable next to the likes of Shipp and Snow.

Still, “The Good Half” reclaims attention every now and then with its occasional humor and grace notes around its side characters. A scene between Renn and a clothing store employee (Ryan Bergara) who fondly remembers how Lily once looked out for him is especially one of those moments that makes you lament the richer film that this might have been. But what we eventually get with “The Good Half” doesn’t even feel half good.