Review: The Half of It
Review: The Half of It
Alice Wu's The Half of It--now among one of the many Netflix Rom-Coms on the streaming site--is a sweet, complex and hilarious romp reminiscent of a story by Edmond Rostand(the Cyrano de Bergerac guy) and one of the best movies of this year while our country is going through a global catastrophe.
This is the story of a young Asian teen girl named Ellie Chu, who has no friends who writes essays for students and works in a train station for a living while living her father. Her fellow school-mate Paul Munsky recruits Ellie to write a letter to Aster Flores, who Ellie's secretly in love with. Naturally, this leads to plenty of rom-com cliches.
Leah Lewis, Daniel Deimer and Alexxis Lemire all gave memorable performances and I really loved the stop-motion animated opening sequence, which is also a retelling of Plato's Symposium. It was the most beautiful sequence I've ever seen and it had one of the most ambiguous endings ever. If I have to wait a couple of years for Ellie to come back to Squahamish and be with Aster then so be it!
Now, I'm about to get really deep you guys. The title of "The Half of It" means so much more than name of the idiom that we've learned in grade school. All three main characters have a secret and hid pieces of themselves. For example, Ellie is the nerd with so many layers(when Ellie and Aster are in the water, she says that she's a Russian doll of clothing), Paul is more than a jock and Aster is more than being the pretty girl and they all become the complete opposite.
In 2004, Alice Wu directed a film called Saving Face which was the First Hollywood movie that centered on Chinese-Americans since The Joy Luck Club and she became the first Asian lesbian to direct a movie and 15 years later she finally made her second feature which was The Half of It. I liked that there was representation in this film because there are rarely any American movies staring Asians and I think the movie industry in the US should pay more attention to their culture. Yes, we had. Crazy Rich Asians but we need MORE representation DAMN IT.
And that's my review on "The Half of It". Thanks for reading. We'll hopefully stay inside for another week and don't believe that bullshit about the recent extension, it's not real.
Santi... OUT. ✌🏻
Alice Wu's The Half of It--now among one of the many Netflix Rom-Coms on the streaming site--is a sweet, complex and hilarious romp reminiscent of a story by Edmond Rostand(the Cyrano de Bergerac guy) and one of the best movies of this year while our country is going through a global catastrophe.
This is the story of a young Asian teen girl named Ellie Chu, who has no friends who writes essays for students and works in a train station for a living while living her father. Her fellow school-mate Paul Munsky recruits Ellie to write a letter to Aster Flores, who Ellie's secretly in love with. Naturally, this leads to plenty of rom-com cliches.
Leah Lewis, Daniel Deimer and Alexxis Lemire all gave memorable performances and I really loved the stop-motion animated opening sequence, which is also a retelling of Plato's Symposium. It was the most beautiful sequence I've ever seen and it had one of the most ambiguous endings ever. If I have to wait a couple of years for Ellie to come back to Squahamish and be with Aster then so be it!
Now, I'm about to get really deep you guys. The title of "The Half of It" means so much more than name of the idiom that we've learned in grade school. All three main characters have a secret and hid pieces of themselves. For example, Ellie is the nerd with so many layers(when Ellie and Aster are in the water, she says that she's a Russian doll of clothing), Paul is more than a jock and Aster is more than being the pretty girl and they all become the complete opposite.
In 2004, Alice Wu directed a film called Saving Face which was the First Hollywood movie that centered on Chinese-Americans since The Joy Luck Club and she became the first Asian lesbian to direct a movie and 15 years later she finally made her second feature which was The Half of It. I liked that there was representation in this film because there are rarely any American movies staring Asians and I think the movie industry in the US should pay more attention to their culture. Yes, we had. Crazy Rich Asians but we need MORE representation DAMN IT.
And that's my review on "The Half of It". Thanks for reading. We'll hopefully stay inside for another week and don't believe that bullshit about the recent extension, it's not real.
Santi... OUT. ✌🏻
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