Sundance Film Festival Reviews 2025: “Hal & Harper”

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HAL & HARPER (no network):  Cooper Raiff launched his career as an actor-writer-director with Shithouse, which won the Narrative Grand Jury Award at SXSW.  He parlayed that into Cha Cha Real Smooth, which was less well-regarded but nevertheless bought by Apple for $15M out of Sundance.  Like many indie filmmakers, he’s now shifted into television, but not in an ordinary way.  The producers of Hal & Harper, including Lionsgate, have fully financed the 8 episodes of the series (running well over 4 hours), without any network attached.  The advantage in theory is that Raiff and his partners now have a completed piece of work ready for air immediately, and which won’t have to deal with the specter of network notes.  The risk, of course, is that this could turn out to be a considerable investment of time and money with no return.  Raiff’s concept here is his most ambitious thus far.  In the present day, siblings Harper (Lili Reinhart) and her younger brother by 2 years Hal (Raiff) cope with the issues of people in their late 20s:  romance, careers, and in their case, the fact that their father (Mark Ruffalo) is marrying his pregnant girlfriend Kate (Betty Gilpin), and since he’s moving in with her, selling their childhood house.  Hal and Harper are never far from their childhoods, however, which were marked by a tragedy that broke their father for many years and forced them to a great extent to raise themselves, and much of the show is in flashback.  More than that, though, most of the flashbacks take place when Harper in 9 and Hal is 7, and during that year (but no other), Reinhart and Raiff play those parts.  Adding another level of complexity, Raiff plays Hal as a 7-year old, while Reinhart’s Harper has the personality of a 28-year old.  It makes conceptual sense–Harper became an adult that year, while her brother stayed a child–but it’s somewhat weird and confusing to watch.  The causes and consequences of codependency are at the heart of the series, a theme that gets repeated more than developed.  Despite the excellent acting by Reinhart, Ruffalo and Gilpin (as in his other films, Raiff remains somewhat unformed as an actor), the episodes of Hal & Harper feel overlong even at 30 minutes or so, and largely lack dramatic tension.  None of Raiff’s work has relied much on structure, and drift is much harder to take spread over multiple hours.