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‘The Good Half’ Review: Nick Jonas Leads a Timid and Awkward Exploration of Familial Grief

Robert Schwartzman’s indie effort, starring Nick Jonas, feels cliché-filled in navigating the tale of a parent’s premature death.

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. 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. 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.

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