Producers: Russell Wayne Groves, Robert Schwartzman and Brett Ryland   Director: Robert Schwartzman   Screenplay: Brett Ryland   Cast: Nick Jonas, Brittany Snow, David Arquette, Alexandra Shipp, Matt Walsh, Elisabeth Shue, Steve Park, Ryan Bergara, Jim C. Ferris and Mason Cufari   Distributor: Utopia

Grade: C

Making a dramedy is a tricky business.  Leavening a serious subject with humor can pay dividends, but it requires a judicious balancing of tones.  If juggled clumsily, the outcome can be painful.  “The Good Half” is about coping with grief over the loss of a loved one, but it aims to mix laughter with the tears.  That’s an admirable goal, but Brett Ryland’s script relies overmuch on snarky, snide one-liners, and its detours into juvenile excess and cloying sentimentality feel false.  The final mixture is more off-putting than insightful or engaging.

The focal figure is Renn Wheeland, who’s introduced as a young boy (Mason Cufari) annoyed with his high-spirited mother Lily (Elisabeth Shue)—a minor-league kleptomaniac (apparently an adorable trait). Going off on a shopping spree in a Cleveland store, she forgets that she’s left him waiting for her on a bench.  When she remembers and they make up over ice cream, he induces her to promise never to leave him again. 

Now Renn, played by Nick Jonas, is a struggling twentysomething writer in Los Angeles, stuck in a job he hates although his clueless boss has offered him a promotion to payroll manager.  Though he mostly avoids talking to family back home, he finally picks up the phone when his sister Leigh (Brittany Wheeland) calls to tell him that Lily has died after a long illness.  So he hurriedly packs and flies east.

On the flight to Ohio Renn strikes up a conversation with talkative Zoey Abbot (Alexandra Shipp), a therapist on her way to a conference in Cleveland who’s just gone through a divorce.  He doesn’t tell her the reason behind his trip home, but after they land suggests perhaps they should get together while she’s in town, and they do.  In fact, they go to a karaoke bar, where Jonas can do a knockout turn to satisfy his teeny-bopper fans.  What a surprise. 

Renn’s main dealings, though, are with family: Leigh, who’s angry with him for shirking his responsibilities during Lily’s illness; their laid-back father Darren (Matt Walsh); and Lily’s second husband Rick (David Arquette), whom they all dislike.  He’s taken it upon himself to arrange for the funeral to be officiated by Father Dan (Steve Park), an odd, “hip” cleric, even though Lily was Jewish.  When Renn meets the priest, he peppers him with sarcasm, and even when the family go to choose a casket together, his remarks to the salesman (Jim C. Ferris) are no less cynical.

In reality, Renn, whose difficulty in coming to grips with his mother’s loss we’re supposed to sympathize with, comes across as a rather obnoxious fellow with a smart-aleck quip for seemingly every occasion.  (Their forced quality makes it understandable that his writing career is floundering.)  Renn’s failure to become a likable protagonist isn’t so much Jonas’ fault as the script’s, but he doesn’t bring a great deal to his performance apart from long, blank gazes into the distance except when he rouses himself to deliver another snarky put-down.  By contrast Snow shows some genuine fire as the angry sister.  But Walsh can do little but mope as their hapless father, and Arquette even less with the role of the resident jerk (though he does get a semi-turn after relenting about handing over Lily’s possessions to her children, though only after they’re attempted a comedically dopey break-in on his house).  Shue offers some empty energy in the flashbacks.

To be fair, “The Good Half” has a few solid moments, like a biting confrontation between Renn and Rick at the funeral in which the protagonist must finally confront his weakness and a throwaway digression in which Renn goes out to buy a tie for the funeral, during which he encounters an old classmate (Ryan Bergara), a clerk in the men’s department at the store.  Despite a dopey start in which Renn tries to avoid the guy (Jonas plays it ineptly), the conversation that results mostly works, even if its turn from comedy to sentiment is pretty obvious.

Technically the film is basically workmanlike, with a plain production design (Nick Faiella) and equally unexceptional cinematography by Michael Rizzi.  Chris Donlon’s editing is a bit bumpy, but things don’t drag too much.

One can appreciate the good motives at work here, and Jonas’ desire to stretch, but the movie is a dramedy in which the balance never gels.