Hal & Harper
(2024 | USA | Cooper Raiff | 270 minutes)

Cooper Raiff’s leap from small heartfelt indie dramas (Shithouse, Cha Cha Real Smooth) to intimate limited series is every bit as wonderful as I’d expect from his previous work.

With their father about to sell their childhood home as the inciting incident, the series follows a pair of trauma-bonded co-dependent siblings across decades from childhood through post-collegiate years. The most potentially cringeworthy conceit — he and Lili Reinhart play their characters both as present day twenty somethings as well as versions of themselves as far back as elementary school — is a huge gambit is perhaps the show’s most surprising success. The actors ability to inhabit their lonely childhood characters makes for an utter heartbreaking rather than silly choice.

Over the eight episodes, Raiff remains a standout of mumblecore masculinity; Reinhart makes a tremendous leap beyond what I’d expected from my limited familiarity with her game. Her character, as a girl forced to grow up way too fast and to put the feelings of her wounded bird dad and stunted brother ahead of herself for decades, becomes the constant and grounding heart of the story.

As a director, Raiff moves through approximately a year of present-day storyline and twenty-ish years of backstory with a delicate yet incisive touch, giving each character standout moments and conveying major story beats with tight montages and telling flashbacks. The device is used sparingly and the actors are so convincing at portraying the fears, anxieties, and repressed sadness of young kids being raised by a deeply depressed and borderline unfit father (Mark Ruffalo, a bottomless well of sadness) that they are able to convey a whole emotional world in incredibly effective shorthand.

As a binge-watch, the four and a half hours following the brother, sister, and father as they navigate romantic struggles, changes to their family, and long-delayed comings of age is a lot to take in a single sitting. I’m very hopeful that someone picks it up so that viewers can let the luminous episodes play out at a more sustainable pace. Still, stretching it out over a day in a death race to the online portal closing, wasn’t the worst way to close out the virtual part of my festival.

Hal & Harper played as an official selection of the Episodic program at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. It has additional screenings in Park City and Salt Lake City throughout the festival and is also available online for the public (January 30–February 2)