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I am currently in a Theology and FIlm class and one of our assignments was to go to a movie and then post a review online. So here it is!
A Review of the Film Everything Must Go
Everything Must Go is a film starring Will Ferrell and written and directed by first-time director Dan Rush about a man named Nick Halsey who is shown in the opening of the film experiencing the worst day of his life. Nick is fired from his long time executive sales position which causes him to relapse into his alcoholism, and he then returns to his suburban Arizona home to find his wife has changed the locks and put all of his personal belongings out on the lawn because she is fed up with their marriage. The movie tells the story of how Nick, with the help of some unlikely neighbors and a friend in the police force, recovers from the initial shock of that awful day and tries to put the pieces of his life back together.
The “pieces” of Nick’s life are a very tangible element in this film as all of his belongings are on the front lawn of a house he no longer has access too. His mess is out in front for everyone to see. Nick cannot hide his alcoholism which leads to the theme of being open and honest about the struggles of life versus trying to hide behind the facade of suburban living. This is one of the areas in which the movie actually succeeds, and as Nick slowly comes to terms with the brokenness of his own life, he begins to sell his belongings from his lawn via an ad-hoc garage sale (with the help of a neighborhood kid who befriends him). The truth behind every successful garage sale is that “one man’s junk is another man’s treasure,” except this film puts a slight twist on that adage in that Nick learns that the junk in his life can be turned into his own treasure if he will just allow himself to break free of the vicious cycle of his own alcoholism (which we find out was also a disease his father struggled with, and therefore is a “generational sin” of sorts). Eventually Nick, through a process of letting go of his own belongings and relying on the help of his neighbors (including a somewhat awkward scene in which he visits an old acquaintance from High School played by Laura Dern), finds a way forward through the mess of his front lawn and ultimately the mess of his life.
While the premise of the film sounds promising, and the opportunity to see Will Ferrell in another somewhat “serious” role like he played in Stranger Than Fiction drew me to this film, the surprisingly poor acting and even poorer writing made this a fairly disappointing movie. Ferrell is in nearly every scene which I think stretches his capabilities as a dramatic actor (unlike STF in which he had other Academy Award winners and nominees alongside) but he isn’t the only one with a disappointing performance. Rebecca Hall, whose performance in The Town gave that film much of it’s emotional weight, was also fairly uninteresting as Nick’s new neighbor Samantha who moves in across the street and helps him out of his rut. There is one promising scene in which Nick calls her out for her own mess (her husband is also a salesman like Nick who has left Samantha alone and pregnant to drive across the country to their new house) and she responds with anger and frustration, because she knows Nick has nailed her situation right on the head. However the scene comes much too late in the film to be of much help, and because it is the only one in which either of the two actors show any range within their characters, the excellence of the scene is lost in the fact that it sort of sticks out like a sore thumb as the only good scene in a sea of bland ones. Similarly, Michael Pena, who plays a detective and Nick’s AA sponsor, is also largely uninteresting in this film, despite his standout roles in previous films, such as the locksmith in the movie Crash.
In defense of the actors, they are not given much to work with. The script of the film, adapted by Dan Rush from a Raymond Carver short story called “Why Don’t You Dance”, is dull and uneventful. To give one example, in the scene after Samantha’s blow-up at Nick, they are both out to dinner at a Mexican food restaurant as Nick’s way of apologizing for his comments to her the night before. The two of them spend the dinner talking about colors for Samantha’s soon-to-be-born baby’s room! The conversation is so benign and disconnected from anything else that has happened in the film that it completely un-works the tension and potential bond created by their previous scene.
While the film asks valuable questions about personal sin and its impact on others and generational sin and its impact on us, while also attempting to make an intriguing connection between our emotional junk and our actual junk, it ultimately falls flat due to a poor script and uninspired acting. In order for the viewer to connect with Nick’s angst and frustration at his crumbling life, Nick needs to be frustrated and full of angst, and it just wasn’t there with Ferrell.
