The Half of It (2020)
(Netflix Streaming, December 2020) Cyrano de Bergerac kind-of-goes Midwestern gay high-school romance in The Half of It, as the story focuses on a young woman with a crush on another female teenager who gets to express her affections by ghostwriting the romantic communications of a friendly guy. Of course, adherence to the classics only goes so far, and the film eventually acquires its own quality when the jock character proves to be a great platonic friend, the object of her affections isn’t necessarily interested, and the entire thing becomes a way for our protagonist to realize what she really wants. The Half of It gets sloppy in part — the third act seems unsupported by what precedes it, as new subplots are quickly introduced and discarded, the focus shifts to some supporting characters and the carefully deliberate pacing of the first part of the film seems abandoned to deliver a conclusion that hasn’t quite figured out how to be as precise as earlier moments in the film. Fortunately, Leah Lewis is very likable in the lead role, clearly portraying the desperation of being a bright urbane young person stuck in a very small and narrow-minded town on the edges of nowhere. Writer-director Alice Wu does get most of it right — but it’s that missing fraction, the late-movie messiness and unfocused plotting that hold back The Half of It from being as exemplary as it could have been. As a result, it may not be as much of a crowd-pleaser as many similar films — it’s fun all right, but there are other better movies if you’re in a hurry. But then again, being in a hurry isn’t exactly a match with The Half of It’s overriding sensibilities.