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.

Producers: Logan Lerman and Jonathan Schwartz   Director: Austin Peters   Screenplay: Sam Freilich, Austin Peters and Deering Regan  Cast: Elizabeth Banks, Lewis Pullman, Luis Gerardo Méndez, Michaela Jaé Rodriguez, Nathan Fillion, Erik Palladino, John Billingsley, Jason Manuel Olazábal and Jesse Saler   Distributor: IFC Films

Grade: C

Austin Peters’ satirical thriller about skullduggery within the California skin care community is obviously inspired by an actual case—that of Dawn DaLuise, the aesthetician-owner of a shop called Skin Refinery, who was accused of plotting the murder of rival Gabriel Suarez, owner-operator of Smooth Cheeks, and spent nearly a year in jail before being acquitted at trial. Though it doesn’t explicitly acknowledge the debt, it’s even set in 2013, about the time of the actual events.   (After her exoneration DaLuise, one might note. opened a new place called Killer Facials.)

It’s a pretty juicy tale (the case implicated Nick Prugo, who’d been a member of the notorious teen Bling Ring), but one handled with less than optimal finesse by Peters and his co-writers Sam Freilich and Deering Regan. “Skincare” tries to keep us guessing while lobbing potshots at the vanity-based industry, but does neither very well. 

Elizabeth Banks is extravagantly over-the-top as Hope Goldman, the DaLuise stand-in, whose boutique beauty shop caters to the rich and famous in Los Angeles.  She’s also about to launch her own expensive, custom-made line of cosmetics, which she’s planning to promote via an interview on a local morning talk show hosted by a stilted fellow named Brett (Nathan Fillion). 

Hope is an enthusiastic entrepreneur but not, it appears, an especially astute one from a practical perspective.  She’s behind on her rent, constantly putting off her landlord Jeff (John Billingsley), and could lose her lease on the shop’s swanky location.  And while always putting on a perky, upbeat face, she’s extremely upset when a competitor, Angel Vergara (Luis Gerardo Méndez) opens a new shop, Shimmer Skin, just across the street from hers.  Her discomfort increases when Brett bumps her taped launch interview for one featuring Vergara, who boasts that his anti-aging treatments are based on discoveries by NASA. She also has to do some fast thinking to deflect Brett when the married man promises to broadcast the interview later in return for some late-night consideration.  He’s only the first man to look on the attractive, increasingly desperate Hope as a potential conquest.

But worse is to come.  Arriving at work one morning, Hope’s informed by her secretary/bookkeeper Marine (Michaela Jaé Rodriguez) that an email’s been sent to all her clients in which she not only confesses to her financial woes but indicates that she’s having an emotional breakdown.  Then the tires on her care are slashed, and a burly ruffian (Jesse Saler) shows up at the shop in response to a message that Hope’s available to provide sexual services.  She’s certain that Angel’s behind it all, but gets no satisfaction by confronting him, or by contacting a police detective (Jason Manuel Olazábal) for help. 

So Hope starts doing some stalking of her own, especially after her home is broken into, and tries to add a gun to her defensive arsenal of mace. She also gets offers of assistance from a couple of men.  Once is Armen (Erik Palladino), the mechanic who helps with the tires and shows some interest in dating her.  The other is Jordan (Lewis Pullman), an old acquaintance who’s now a self-styled life coach; he effectively suggests becoming her personal protector.  But things continue to deteriorate, until everything unravels and the truth of the matter is revealed, not to Hope’s advantage. 

“Skincare” might have been fashioned as a statement about the difficulties female entrepreneurs face in struggling to succeed, or as a scathing commentary on the upper-end cosmetics business,. But it’s content to skirt any deeper issues in favor of an obvious portrait of a driven but rather scatterbrained young woman and a whodunit that, in the end, opts for a lazy resolution.  What might have been a sharp satire instead emerges as a disappointingly skin-deep comedy of errors with a downbeat close.

Nevertheless one has to recognize the full-throated effort Banks puts into the piece—she’s on the screen virtually non-stop, and holds it expertly even as the plot goes haywire, helped by Christopher Ripley’s cinematography, which suggests a world closing in on her as some even suspect she might have engineered everything as a publicity stunt, and Fatima Al Quadiri’s score, which morphs from the bubbly to something more discordant.  And while no one else in the cast has an opportunity to make much of an impression, despite a limited budget the picture enjoys some creamy visual panache as a result of Liz Toonkel’s production design and Angelina Vitto’s costumes.  But Laura Zemoel’s editing can’t always successfully cope with the tonal shifts.

In the end “Skincare” is a film with potential, but unfortunately fails to realize it.