Movie of the Week: Everything Must Go

So yesterday I saw Will Ferrel’s new film Everything Must Go.  In case you do not have the patience to read the entire blog here is a quick summary.  Imagine if Will Ferrel’s character from Old School, Frank The Tank, were the same person, but with real world consequences.  It is occasionally funny, but mostly sort of sad.  And it is a pretty good movie, which was a relief because I half saw this as a protest against the sure-fire success of the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean film.  I just couldn’t bring myself to see a 4th Pirates of the Caribbean film.  The franchise started great and then films two and three were abominations.  With film series my motto is “Fool me once, ok if you had a good first film.  Fool me twice, now I will no longer support your films.”  This applies well to the Shrek franchise as well, and may apply to Transformers and Iron Man franchises in the future.

Everything Must Go, which is a step back from the norm for Will Ferrel, is about a relatively successful businessman whose entire life falls apart in a short amount of time because of a relapse in his battle with alcohol.  The amount of Pabst Blue Ribbon consumed by Ferrel’s character, Nick Halsey, represents the most alcohol consumed by any one film character not played by Nicholas Cage.

So when locked out of his house by his wife, with all his belongings strewn about his front lawn, Ferrel enlists the help of a neighborhood kid named Kenny, played by the son of the late Notorious B.I.G., to sell his belongings.  There is of course some mentoring that happens here, but fortunately it never has the feel of a “white guy helping poor black kid,” primarily because the kid seems to have his sh*t together better than the adult.  But vice versa, there is also never that one cheesy moment of Nick saying “NO kid, you taught ME” to Kenny.

The movie is basically about moving on with your life when you are the one who has messed things up and I think it does a nice job.  Ferrel’s character is wronged and you root for him, but it is still he who is most responsible for his own wronging.  Nothing feels forced in the movie, not the friendship between Nick and Kenny, not the fight with alcoholism (and since he drinks PBR he rarely has to go through big dramatic withdrawal because of how cheap it is) and not the humor, which is very organic.

My favorite thing about the movie was that it was an indie film, but because of the format of it it lacked some of the more odious cliches of indie films (no shots of characters on airport walkways or on escalators looking off brainless into the distance, not too much indie film music, no Parker Posey or Zooey Deschanel).  So thanks to a strong performance from Will Ferrel and a simple approach to showing someone’s life crumbling and re-building I give it a B+ – it is the indie film for people who don’t particularly like indie films.

Next week – Kung Fu Panda 2 and/or The Hangover 2