Nick Jonas is "Only Human" in The Good Half, a movie that's a "Sucker" for irritating grief-informed melodrama

We all cope with death differently. It's a messy process that rarely follows a linear path of recovery. Instead, it's a brutal entanglement of conflicting emotions that fluctuates in intensity. You never recover from grief. Processing it, though, to quote BoJack Horseman, "gets easier. Every day it gets a little easier." Given that we all must inevitably grapple with this experience, I hope, dear reader, your descents into coping with loss are more bearable than watching The Good Half. This Robert Schwartzman directorial effort yearns for profoundness in covering this weighty topic. Instead, it’s a miscalculated enterprise. Finally, we know what would happen if Ryan Reynolds anchored a Zach Braff indie movie written by Joss Whedon.

28-year-old Renn Wheeland (Nick Jonas) is reluctantly returning home to Cleveland, Ohio after his mom, Lily (Elisabeth Shue), passes away. Struggling writer Renn hates his hometown almost as much as he despises what a rut his life is in. Once he arrives, he injects sarcasm and aloofness into the frazzled lives of his father, Darren (Matt Walsh), and sister, Leigh (Brittany Snow). The latter character especially has no time for Renn’s nonsense. She’s trying to organize so much for their mother’s funeral.

While engaging in tasks like picking out a coffin and picking up valuable mementos from their childhood home, the past keeps creeping up on Renn. Visions of yesteryear, sunny memories of him and Lily bonding, intrude on his life. On the outside, Renn plays everything off with quips and an IDGAF demeanor. However, these flashbacks make it clear Renn is as distraught over the past as everyone else.

In Brett Ryland's screenplay, Renn expresses incredulousness over discovering his mother will be buried in a cemetery. Renn maintains Lily wanted to be cremated because, after all, who would want to be buried in Cleveland? His disdain for this city immediately conjures up memories of one of The Last Black Man in San Francisco's most memorable lines: "You don't get to hate it unless you love it." The Good Half has the first part of that equation down pat. But what about the specifics of this city? What informs Renn’s hatred? What idiosyncratic traits define Cleveland?

Schwartzman and Ryland never give viewers a sense of personality to The Good Half’s version of Cleveland. This feature could reside in any American city. Renn’s constant yammering about how much he hates Cleveland just hammers home the deficiency of identity in this feature’s backdrops. A similarly generic quality permeates the motion picture’s dialogue. This is especially true of Renn and Zoey's (Alexandra Shipp) “witty” banter. The pair speak almost exclusively in sarcasm-drenched pop culture references. Furthermore, minimal differences exist in their individual verbiage. If the twist of The Good Half had been that Zoey was a Tyler Durden-style figment of Renn’s imagination, their sharing of the same speaking patterns would've at least made sense!

Alas, no such twist is lurking in the corner to explain this screenwriting deficiency. Ryland’s script instead has people speaking in interchangeable ways. To rub salt into the audience's wounds, Renn delivers truly atrocious zingers like “I’m gonna stay right here in sad town.” The Good Half desperately needs to get in touch with a messier and more realistic tone. Instead, those half-hearted quips epitomize Schwartzman’s mechanical and predictable approach to this story. Even moments of overt vulnerability, like Lee sobbing in front of a closet, come off as calculated. There’s too much preciseness and polish here for a motion picture grappling with all the jaggedness of loss.

That even extends to the miscasting of Nick Jonas as Renn. Most famous as a pop star, Jonas has shown chops as a comedic performer in works like the Jumanji movies. He's also got experience as a Broadway actor. It’s not inconceivable he could pull off a dramatic indie feature role. However, Jonas is always a tad too handsome and composed to sell Renn as a struggling writer using sarcasm to mask internalized chaos. He fails to sell an everyman spirit in his performance. Adding insult to injury, Ryland's didactic dialogue fails Renn's most intimate moments. We’ll never know if Nick Jonas could sell a quiet portrayal of grief. After all, The Good Half can’t stop handing him ham-fisted lines spelling out Renn’s emotions.

Missed opportunities like that abound in the production, including in the character of stepdad Rick Barona (David Arquette). This figure eventually emerges as a true-blue "villain" for the piece, a staggeringly poor idea for a grounded drama. Painting things in such black-and-white morality crystallizes The Good Half’s simplistic approach to the world. Barona is not a fleshed-out human being. He’s just a plot device providing enough villainy to eventually unite our three lead characters in the script’s final act. How can the audience connect with these figures if the script doesn’t see them as characters?

The only facet of The Good Half that really shines is Christopher Donion's editing. Renn's flashbacks to interacting with his mom tend to interlink with the present. Somebody saying "Renn!" in the past leads directly to someone shouting the same phrase in the present. Donion does great work with precisely timing these cuts between disparate time periods. In the process, he provides a rare subtle rendering of this protagonist’s problems. Renn doesn’t want to talk about his pain or say out loud that his mom is gone. However, Donion’s editing provides a clear overlap between the past and present exemplifying how he’s fleeing from the inevitable. These portions of existence will collide no matter how much Renn fights.

The Good Half’s visuals are otherwise thoroughly generic, save for amusing wide shots capturing the messy interiors of Father Dan's (Steve Park) office. With no intriguing imagery or lastingly meaningful characters to hang onto, Robert Schwartzman’s filmmaker flickers out of your mind the moment The Good Half’s end credits roll. The complexities of grieving a loved one have informed many great movies. The Good Half is one of the weaker entries in that cinematic canon. If you want to experience truly outstanding art involving Nick Jonas, just rock out to the Jonas Brothers cover of "Year 3000".