Netflix’s The Half Of It – A Fresh Teen Romantic Comedy (Early Review)

High school comedies are a dime a dozen but every once in a while, a new player comes out of nowhere and shakes things up. Netflix has offered us countless teen-centered offerings in the past from the To All The Boyfriends I’ve Loved Before series to The Kissing Booth and now they are back with one of their better original films. the teen romantic comedy The Half Of It. As the poster suggests, this film offers a different kind of love story fueled by a different perspective on the idea of love. It goes about this with plenty of charm, relatable characters, and a grounded story that is surely to appeal with teen audiences. While the film will inevitably not appeal to everyone, not that it has to, it’s still a fun escape that is sure to find a following along the lines of those aforementioned films regardless.

The Half Of It follows a nerdy, awkward teen named Ellie Chu (Lewis). In a desperate position and looking for cash, she would leverage her reputation into writing a love letter for high school jock Paul Munsky (Diemer). Little did she know that this relationship would develop into an unlikely friendship and that she would eventually fall for the object of Munsky’s affection, the beautiful Aster Flores (Lemire). While some of these plots threads were on the predictable side, the complicated relationship between these three characters was fun to watch. Meanwhile, these characters also had a surprising amount of depth to them which made them more interesting but would not really matter in the end. First and foremost, the film was all about this relationship and for that, it succeeds wholeheartedly.

Chu was the standard outlier within her high school, surviving using her smarts more than her social skills. Munsky was a football player who was more brawn than brains. Flores was one of the popular girls for which many would gravitate around. Over the course of The Half Of It, these roles would evolve in a compelling way as they were much more than they appeared on the surface (though they were surrounded by shallow characters to help reinforce this). Chu and Munsky’s relationship started as a transactional one and became more of a friendly one which in reality was more of a mutually beneficial one, whether they admitted it to each other or not, as each arguably were blinded by love while using the other as a means to get to Flores. The line between their relationship and that with Flores got increasing blurry and complicated as the latter inevitably came in the way. However, where the story went from there was unexpected and refreshing to say the least. Flores was more than just one of the popular girls, and wanted to be seen by others as more than that, as she developed feelings for the writer behind the note because they saw her as something more as opposed to her current relationship. She wasn’t blind to what was going on.

The best part of The Half Of It was the star-making performance from Lewis as Chu though Diemer as Munsky and Lemire as Flores weren’t too far behind, all in their first film roles. She carries the film with her charisma and screen presence, creating a relatable and likeable character that allows audiences to better connect with the story and Chu’s struggles. Diemer certainly wasn’t lacking in charm either as Munsky. He breathes some life and likability into a character, elevating what could easily have been a dumb cliche. Lemire made an impact with charm and her bubbly personality in criminally a smaller role than the other two.

At the end of the day, The Half Of It is a certainly a surprise worth checking out.

*still courtesy of Netflix*

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Keith Noakes

The EIC of the coincidentally-named keithlovesmovies.com. A Canadian who prefers to get out of the cold and into the warmth of a movie theatre.