It’s summer blockbuster season and SNL vet and box-office champ Will Ferrell has a new movie out — but something is off. Gone are the wacky characters, funny accents, toilet humor and outrageous plotting that turned movies like Talladega Nights, Anchorman and Old School into huge hits. Instead, Everything Must Go is the muted tale of an alcoholic who back-flips off the wagon after losing his wife and job. Ferrell has “gone serious” before, most notably in the wonderful Stranger Than Fiction, but that movie had a bounce to it that Everything Must Go is noticeably lacking.
Ferrell stars as Nick Halsey, a salesman whose glory days have long since evaporated in a haze of women and drink. Returning home after being fired for yet another relapse, Halsey finds the locks changed and all his stuff sitting on the front lawn. His long-suffering wife has split, his ex-employer has repoed his company car, and Halsey is frozen in place staring at his worldly possessions and wondering what to do next. (His choice: Bike up to the Qwik Stop and get a case of PBR tallboys.)
The neighbors call the cops (it’s illegal to live in one’s front yard, a detail Halsey finds surprising), but Halsey’s sponsor (Michael Pena) happens to be a Detective and he finds a loophole in the law that says a person can have a yard sale for a week without getting hassled. With the help of a smart kid (Christopher Jordan Wallace) similarly stranded on the street, Halsey reluctantly organizes his stuff into an everything-must-go sale that becomes a lingering metaphor for his desire (buried in his subconscious, to be sure) to start over.
Everything Must Go is based on a short story by Raymond Carver, a writer who specialized in detailing the mundane with brevity and sharp focus. You can feel Carver’s influence throughout, even as nothing much happens in Everything Must Go. Halsey starts to dry out, sells his stuff, has some interesting conversations with a neighbor across the street (Rebecca Hall) and finds out that lots of people in this world have secrets they aren’t proud of. (Shocking!) I found several of the subplots completely unnecessary, including a trip by Halsey to visit an old classmate (Laura Dern, radiant and wasted) and his snooping on a conceited neighbor (Stephen Root), both of which feel completely tacked on.
That said, Ferrell does deliver a solid performance that’s different from his previous work, the supporting cast is spot-on (young Christopher Jordan Wallace should have a long career ahead of him), and first-time filmmaker Dan Rush is competent in the director’s chair. Yet I was still less than thrilled with Everything Must Go. This is a movie that seems to be shouting, “Look, I’m meant to be taken seriously!” but ultimately lacks the depth to pull it off. As counter-programming to the silly slate of summer blockbusters, Everything Must Go will appeal to adults who have no interest in explosions and superheroes. But if you’re like me, you may walk out of the multiplex wondering, “Why so serious?”
This article appears in May 12-18, 2011.