
The Half Of It (Alice Wu, 2020) is your classic American teen romcom with a twist: it's GAY. Lesbian, specifically. Maybe bisexual on one half; it's hard to tell. Typical high school nerd Ellie Chu writes other people's school essays for money to help support her father. One day she is commissioned by Paul to write a love letter to beautiful popular girl Aster, and it works almost too well. Ellie writes with increasing passion to Aster, who thinks she's Paul, and a complicated pseudo-relationship progresses. I'm not going to lie, it's a great premise. And, despite some clumsiness, it mostly delivers. [...]