Director: Robert Schwartzman
A funeral drags a reluctant son home in "The Good Half," a 2024 comedy-drama about the mess of family left behind after loss.
What is The Good Half about?
Renn Wheeland has spent years keeping his family at arm's length, and it takes his mother's death to pull him back to Cleveland. Once there, he's forced to confront the people he's avoided: a high-strung sister who never let go of old resentments, a father whose good intentions rarely land right, and a step-father he doesn't fully trust. The trip home is meant to last just long enough for the funeral, but a chance encounter with a magnetic stranger on his flight changes the shape of the visit. She pushes him past his usual deflections, needling him toward conversations he's spent a career of small talk and bigger silences avoiding. What starts as an obligation turns into a reckoning — with his family, and with the parts of himself he'd rather not examine. The film balances grief with sharp, situational comedy rather than treating either as the whole story.
Cast & crew
Nick Jonas plays Renn, the emotionally guarded writer at the center of the story, opposite Brittany Snow as his sister and Alexandra Shipp as the stranger who upends his flight home. Matt Walsh and David Arquette round out the father figures in Renn's life, while Elisabeth Shue appears in a role tied to the family's past.
Context & significance
"The Good Half" is director Robert Schwartzman's feature that leans into the tradition of homecoming dramas built around a death in the family, a setup familiar from films that mine grief for both humor and discomfort. Set and shot around Cleveland, the story uses its Midwestern backdrop to ground a narrative that could otherwise tip into melodrama, keeping its 96-minute runtime tightly focused on one extended, awkward family reunion.
Where & how to watch
K-Time streams "The Good Half" with Persian dubbing and Persian subtitles available alongside the original English track. Reading about the film, including the details and FAQs on this page, requires no account, but watching it does — simply log in to a K-Time account, where the entire experience is built with Farsi-speaking audiences in mind.