Ellie Chu is a very bright high school senior. She’s not popular in the least. In fact, she’s more of a target for Chugga-Chugga-Chu-Chu teasing. But Ellie is so bright that a good chunk of the student body is more than willing to fork over good money to get her to write their papers for them. If you think about it, you’ve gotta be pretty smart to make the same paper sound distinctive enough that five or six students in the same class can hand it in.
Mrs. Geeselchap, the literature teacher, knows about Ellie’s little report-writing business. But she’s cynical enough that she’d rather see how Ellie changes things up each time than have to read the garbage the other students would be writing.
All in all, though, the cash Ellie brings in goes to a good cause. When Ellie’s dad emigrated from China, he had hopes of making something of himself in the States. But his broken English has kept him in a job that doesn’t earn a third of what he’s capable of. So Ellie works hard to shore up their faltering finances.
There’s one recent writing-job request, though, that Ellie is reluctant to take. A football jock named Paul Munsky wants Ellie to help him craft a love letter. Paul gets nervous around girls, you see, and especially around one particular girl. That’s why he hatched this idea.
Paul has all the writing chops of a fifth grader. He’s smart enough, however, to know that the girl he wants would require something special. I mean, Aster Flores is the prettiest girl in school. She’s always nice, really smart, and she’s the girlfriend of the school’s most popular guy. Writing something like, “Your face is, like, really pretty!” isn’t gonna cut it.
Paul wants something poetic. Something … good. And so he goes to Ellie and offers twice her normal fee.
Secretly, however, Ellie has her own issues with Aster Flores. Sure, Ellie could create any number of artfully flowing lines about Aster’s breathtaking beauty, her dazzling eyes and how one could dive into the infinite ocean of her thoughts. But the problem is—and she’d never tell anyone this—Ellie would mean every word. She’d feel every syllable. And that … would be just a bit too weird.
Triple your fee? Paul pleads.
Well, her dad could use the money. And if it’s just one letter, it wouldn’t be so bad. Just … one.
Although Paul and Ellie start out, essentially, as co-conspirators working to deceive someone, they become good friends along the way. Together these two disparate teens begin teaching each other how to be better people.
Paul learns how to express himself better and discovers that personal sacrifice is a central part of both romantic love and friendship. Ellie softens her defensive shell and reveals her deeper emotions. Paul encourages her to reach for things of value in her life. In fact, all three leading characters—Ellie, Paul and Aster—are challenged to reach for better choices in their lives rather than just drifting along with the expectations of others.
It’s obvious that Ellie’s dad is loving and protective of her. And the film points out that positive change can sometimes be difficult and emotionally painful to embrace. During a discussion about letting Ellie follow her dreams, for instance, her dad asks Paul, “Have you ever loved someone so much, you don’t want anything about her to change?”
Throughout the film, questions are subtly raised about the value of belief in God or the authority of anything that frowns on love in any form. Aster’s father—whom she repeatedly mentions is strict (and loosely connects to Nazis)—is the pastor of the local church. The central characters sit through a sermon about Satan planting seeds of sin in the community and plotting to “destroy the life God has prepared for us.” Similarly, another senior pastor suffering from dementia, and he regularly stands in his front yard or sits in church and loudly calls out about the encroaching evils of spiritual and physical forces around us.
Aster asks Ellie if she believes in God, who she states that she does not. “That must be nice,” Aster retorts. “It’s not. It’s lonely,” Ellie says in turn. Aster also suggests that she thinks the first letter she received from Paul was a sign from God.
Snarky Mrs. Geeselchap chimes in about faith too, talking in class about a Sartre quote and stating that “we are the source of our own hell.” She also notes that, “Everyone in this town fears God. But you know who God fears? The teacher’s union.”
Ultimately, even easy-going Paul starts commenting on the somewhat spiritual happenings around him. When he first finds out about Ellie’s attraction to Aster, he’s most upset that her feelings are a sin that will send Ellie to hell. Later, however, he stands in church and declares, “I always thought there was only one way to love. But there are more!” And when someone references the biblical definition of love being “patient, kind and humble,” Ellie pushes back. “Love is messy and horrible and selfish and bold,” she declares.
In fact, these declarations in church cause quite an uproar that leaves Mrs. Geeselchap in a happy state. “Now, that is some divine intervention,” she grins. Paul talks about confession with a couple guys. Aster and her family members cross themselves before dinner.
At the beginning of the film, Ellie talks about the ancient Greek belief that people were originally created with four arms and legs, two heads and two faces that were whole and perpetually happy. But then, she says, the Greeks believed that “the gods, fearing our wholeness would quell a need for worship, split us in two.”
We see a male and female student making out in the school hallway. Paul and Aster kiss as well. Paul and Aster’s boyfriend, Trig, try to kiss Ellie. A French film on TV shows a woman exposing a bare shoulder and a man running his finger along her back.
Ellie wrestles with her growing feelings for Aster throughout the film. And there’s quite a bit of sexual tension between Ellie and Aster later in the film. As friends, the two young women take off most of their clothes and slip into a hot pool together—floating without touching, talking and listening to love songs. (We see Aster’s bare shoulders.)
When Aster learns that the author of the romantic thoughts she fell in love with is actually Ellie, she gets angry and upset. She later admits, as the two meet before heading off for college, that the thought of being with Ellie crossed her mind. “If things were different. Or I was different,” she says. In spite of that, Ellie kisses her and says, “I’ll see you in a couple years.”
After being publicly humiliated, Aster slaps Paul across the face.
We hear one s-word and two uses each of “h—” and “d–n.” Someone is called a “bad a–.” An unfinished “what the …” is left hanging. A kid uses the term “effin” and the word “crap.” And there are four exclamations of “Oh my god!”
Paul and Ellie go to a student party filled with drinking teens, and Ellie is drawn into a game of “Drinkers of Catan.” She soon gets fairly drunk. So much so, that Paul pulls her away from the party to take her home to his house. The next morning, she wakes to find a couple aspirin he has laid out for her.
There are a few toilet-humor jokes in the dialogue mix. For example, when Ellie is asked if she’ll attend the school football game, she snorts, “Can’t wait to see a bunch of guys sniffing each other’s butts.”
At the beginning of this film Ellie Chu ushers us in with the declaration, “This is not a love story: not one where anyone gets what they want.” And in a very real sense, she’s right. The Half of It has been justifiably summed up by some critics as having a “Cyrano de Bergerac vibe with a modern twist.”
As a classic that play-lovers would know, that suggests a tale of unrequited longing and intelligent nuance, blossoming friendship and comedic deception. Which, if you think about it, is quite a bit for a contemporary teen comedy to pull off. However, this pic delivers, carrying us along with very likeable characters, as well as a sweet and gentle story in many ways.
But then there’s that modern twist mentioned above. The Half of It comes packing the two-punch combo of same-sex attraction and subtle elbows thrown at people of faith—or anyone who preaches the “religious” idea that same-gender romantic attraction isn’t the way God designed romance to be.
That particular choice, however, won’t be as universally appreciated as the filmmakers behind The Half of It might have hoped. Because it makes this less a story of self-discovery, friendship and unrequited love and more of an agenda-driven tale … with its own sermons to preach.
After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.
