"Everything Must Go" 2/5 Pitchforks Starring: Will Ferrell Rated R May 13, 2011
If you haven’t heard, finding a job is hard these days. Keeping them can be just as tricky — just ask Glenn Beck. Whether you're an above-average employee or not, everyone is fair game — Will Ferrell included.
Actually, he — Will Ferrell, the man — is doing just fine finding work. However, his most recent character, Nick Halsey, of “Everything Must Go,” is not fairing quite as well.
A struggling alcoholic, Nick eventually losses his job through a series of questionable events while on a business trip, which just so happens to be quasi-related to Nick’s personal life, as his wife leaves him on the very same day.
With locks changed and the company car revoked, he is left stranded on his front lawn with nowhere to go and everything he owns and holds most dear thrown about his lawn. With nothing more except for the cash in his wallet, Nick decides to simply set up camp.
While Ferrell attempts (yet again) to portray a man who is constantly occupied in deep-reflexive thought, like that of his role in the 2006 movie “Stranger Than Fiction.” Ferrell (yet again) fails to show the true depths a character of this nature requires. Where the overall production of “Stranger Than Fiction” was more effective, “Everything Must Go” was obviously on a far tighter budget.
Apparently based on a short story by Raymond Carver, Dan Rush makes his directorial debut with a relative swing (and miss) as this glimpse into the often exploited dark-comical side of life fails in its two main endeavors: to be both dark and comical. Of which any traceable amounts in this stretched-out, 96-minute “life in transition” film are scant at best.
In the end, little is resolved. We are first introduced to a man who is “on the brink” in one sense, and by the end we find him still “on the brink,” only in a slightly different kind of way.
If “Bridesmaids” is sold out, or if you really want to see a lame-duck retelling of a life in-between major life decisions, go see “Everything Must Go.”
Then again, “Thor” is still in theaters, and if ever there were a man who could turn lemons into lemonade, it would have to be him.
Reach the reporter at jbfortne@asu.edu
