A reserved man with some unresolved childhood issues returns to his hometown for the funeral of a parent. This isn’t only the premise at the heart of Robert Schwartzman’s well-meaning yet timid feature “The Good Half,” but also a recurrent foundation on which many a melancholic American dramedy, from “Elizabethtown” to “Garden State” to “This Is Where I Leave You.”
Pointing out this thematic repetition isn’t necessarily to knock down one of cinema’s favorite topics — after all, familial grief is among the most shared and relatable of human aches. And what are movies, if not an echo of those experiences? But you still go into a film like
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