‘The Half of It’ is the whole package | Netflix movie review

The Half of it is a modern retelling of Cyrano de Bergerac that explores sexuality, identity, friendship, and growing up queer

Quick cut: The Half of it is a melancholy, but an ultimately joyful, exploration of growing up and exploring your identity told through a thoughtful, meditative, and heartwarming story.

★★★★★

To steal a term from one of the great artists working today, The Half of It feels like future nostalgia. We’ve seen the modern take on the classic play Cyrano de Bergerac countless times — there are even two other Netflix originals with the same plot. However, director/writer Alice Wu finds a singular take with the story by mining achingly personal themes that elevate it past its high school movie tropes. 

In The Half of it, our Cyrano is Ellie Chu (Leah Lewis), a shy straight-A student living in the small rural town Squahamish, Washington, where she and her parents immigrated to from China when she was a child — though her mother died shortly after. Her father (Collin Chou) …