B. Patrick
Author’s Note: This review of Everything Must Go was originally written on May 18, 2011, watching the film during its theatrical release.
I don’t get out to the theatres for movies much anymore. The past few weeks, I’ve had a little more time and caught a few movies. Two weeks ago, I went with a few friends for Thor and last weekend, I got talked into seeing Bridesmaids. Seeing as I’ve seen the movies at the top of the box office the past few trips, I hit a theatre with a friend that was playing smaller releases. While Atlas Shrugged was rather tempting, we ended up going to Will Ferrell’s new film Everything Must Go.
I didn’t know much about this movie going in. I knew it was a low budget, as I hadn’t even realized it was released. I was a bit worried after the trailers beforehand were typically coming across as generic, stereotypical indie movie fare.
First trailer – The Future.
I was taken aback by the creepy talking cripple cat in the beginning. I got a dirty look by laughing through the preview because it just looked like it had so many elements of the stereotypical indie movie.
Second trailer – Beginnings.
Saw Ewan McGregor. Kept the theme of communicating animal with dog-thought subtitles. My first thought was wondering if Ewan McGregor was going to expose himself to the dog. Instead we get to learn about his dad, Christopher Plummer, discovering himself as a House music loving gay man after his wife’s death. Brilliant. (Author’s Note: Months later, it would turn out the Academy loved this)
Third trailer – Submarine.
I had seen this trailer a couple weeks back watching something late at night on HDNet. At the time, I thought the movie could be decent. Didn’t know Ben Stiller was producing from the short trailer I saw, and somehow, stuff like the sparks shooting out of the bike struck me more watching it on the big screen.
Fourth trailer – Project Nim.
Communicating animal dominant trailers continue, although all baby chimp pictures really got me excited. I thought I was sold when they talked about how this chimp loved alcohol and fast cars, but I was really sold when I find out 70s bitches be breastfeeding chimps. The theatre would not pre-sell me a ticket tonight.
Here’s the feature’s trailer, which I had not seen going in.
I knew it was about Will Ferrell losing his job and his wife leaving him on the same day, locking him and his possessions out on his front lawn with no money. That was the extent of what I knew, mainly from the local news because apparently some of the movie was filmed locally. I had heard it was a bit more dramatic than the typical Ferrell movies, but it was much more than I expected.
The film, based on a short story by Raymond Carver called “Why Don’t You Dance?”, was essentially a straight-up drama. The “funny” parts of the trailer are essentially all of the parts in the movie that are supposed to be found humorous, outside of one or two little moments. Within the first minutes, we see that Ferrell’s character Nick Halsey is an alcoholic. His firing is ambiguous, other than hinting his drinking problem was involved. The highlight of this is that his dick boss is being played by Glenn Howerton, which was a pleasant surprise. Ferrell slashes Glenn’s tires but his going away knife that has his name on it gets stuck in the tire. He buys some beer and goes home to find his wife gone and all his stuff on the lawn. After he camps out on his lawn and interacts with his neighbors and the police, his AA sponsor shows up. His sponsor is apparently also a homicide detective played by Michael Pena. Pena gets Nick some time to get off his own lawn by finding a loophole that someone can have a yard sale for five days. At this point, there are three more days for Nick to get off the lawn. He befriends a neighborhood kid played by the son of Notorious B.I.G. and also meets his new pregnant neighbor, who is moving in on her own as her husband is still across the country settling details with his job, which is also the reason they are relocating.
The pregnant woman basically becomes the ingénue, despite not taking the romantic role in this. At one point, they become close over some Chinese food in the lawn. Afterwards, it takes a sharp turn as it is revealed the reason lost his job was he fell off the wagon celebrating a huge deal at a work conference in another state and a female business partner accused him of rape, which he was so drunk he couldn’t recall if it happened or not. At this point, the little, dry comedic moments pretty much stop and the movie becomes a bit more of a heavy-handed. He gets closer with the kid and neighbor, teaching the kid how to play baseball and giving pregnant neighbor a vintage camera, as her dream job as a photographer is cut short due to her husband. She takes a quick picture of him, everything is delightful. While the relationship with the kid doesn’t falter, he enters his dark hour by fighting with the pregnant neighbor. He has a severe withdrawal, which she comes off to calm him down with some valium. She tells him he needs help and he goes off saying that everyone else around has problems, not just him. She asks what her problem is and gets angered by him pointing out that her husband is messed up to make a pregnant lady move across the country on her own and hasn’t shown up because the husband is the probably the same as Nick, so she is looking at her future.
If the plot sounded a bit too soap opera-like already, we haven’t even gotten to the juicy parts, which I’ll mark as spoiler for those who intend on watching the film fresh.
SPOILERS BEGIN (highlight to read)
It all kind of becomes a blur at this point, but for some reason, Nick digs out an old yearbook where Laura Dern as a teenager called him a “diamond in the rough”. She recalls a story where he protected her in high school, that presumably his years of alcohol abuse made him forget. Not the fact it was a lame story.
Releasing he is good, he starts to turn things around by noticing that the kid has put a lot of effort into listening to his sales advice and helping him sell things off. After he has heartwarming moments bonding with creepy, yard sale attending neighbors, he makes good with the prego next door. He invites her to authentic Mexican dinner with him and the kid. During the delightful dinner, he runs into old boss Glenn Howerton in the bathroom. Strangely for such a serious movie, this is third non-comedic scene of Ferrell taking a piss, and won’t be the last. Howerton explains the girl that got him fired was lying and accused multiple people in the past of the same thing. He rubs in the fact Nick probably could’ve made a killing off suing the company for wrongful termination had he not sliced his towers, and then to be an uber dick, leaves a beer under Nick’s nose to tempt him. Nick gives the beer back and asks pregnant lady to take him somewhere.
Nick gets dropped off at his AA sponsor’s office. He goes to say how good he’s been doing, but the sponsor gets called away. This is where the magic happens. Nick notices that his wife is calling the AA sponsor. He picks up the phone and without saying a word, the wife reveals that she is staying (and apparently in a relationship now) with the AA sponsor. They scuffle in the office and the needless twist is emphasized for a few minutes more by the sponsor driving him back to his house and giving him things to survive on before signing all the his property over.
Nick goes back to his house and starts to move on with his life. He talks about friendship with the kid, gives away some of the possessions he wouldn’t part with by leaving them on neighbors doorsteps. We see the husband finally arrive at the neighbor’s house. She comes over to comfort Nick. You get the feeling that the movie will still have an ending with not everything wrapping up so nicely, but at the last second, she hands him the picture she took with his vintage camera that has her fortune from the cookie the night they had Chinese plastered on the bottom that reads “ALL IS NOT YET LOST”.
Then I groaned and the credits rolled.
END OF SPOILERS
I had somewhat mixed feelings on this movie. Ferrell actually gave a very strong performance. Even though he had a few funny moments, he didn’t go all wacky and even in his despair, he never did any yelling that is usually seen in his more serious roles. His performance was very solid and I’d be interested in him taking another turn with a better script.
Howerton, who was in the movie very briefly, was perfect for his role and a highlight for me in his five minutes of screen time. Everyone else was what you’d expect.
I’d say the film’s major flaw was the script. At times, I appreciated it being something different, but then it would take a turn trying to be too serious. They flirted with some more serious issues like the implied rape and his alcoholism stemming from his father being an alcoholic, but never went into any of them.
Overall, it was decent. Ferrell’s performance may be worth checking out for people who like seeing actors do something different, but it wasn’t anything groundbreaking either. I wouldn’t call the movie bad, but really I felt it to be a movie that took itself more serious than it should’ve. I don’t know if that is fair to say being unfamiliar with the short story, but by the end of the movie, I was generally feeling indifferent about it, with a slight slant down based on the last moment I mentioned in the spoiler tags.
