Everything Must Go
Sunshine Cinema, May 15, 2011
Movie #28 for 2011
Just like Bridesmaids, when we meet the main character of Everything Must Go, he is at bottom with little spark to speak of. Nick (WILL FERRELL, Stranger Than Fiction, Anchorman) is a relapsing alcoholic who has had a busy morning - he has lost his job, his wife has locked him out of their house with all his stuff on the front lawn, and he has been on a before-lunch bender. And it seems likely that there is plenty more down to come for him.
Everything Must Go is expanded from a short story by Raymond Carver and the film retains Carver’s literary feel. But in the passages where an author would have described Nick’s inner life and what brought him to this point, the film is silent - but for a few tantalizing glimpses, Nick is impenetrable.
Ferrell is great as the blank faced, unappealing drunk. Without much of a sense of what he was like before we meet him - what was he like the last year when he was intermittently sober? - it’s hard not to imagine that he hasn’t always been this way. Especially when he is weird or mean to an old school friend (LAURA DERN, Inland Empire, Jurassic Park) or a new neighbor (REBECCA HALL, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, The Town). And without much of Nick's past or inner life to illuminate (best done in scenes with a young bored boy from up the road played by CHRISTOPHER JORDAN WALLACE), the short running time feels a little stretched.
Ferrell, however, brings vulnerability and a (very) quite desperation to Nick, tempering his off-putting asshole behavior. While Nick the character is incapable of bringing some spark into his life, Ferrell does a pretty decent job of trying to bring some spark to the character.
