Will be Ferrell has deviated from his comic character from time to time, giving more dramatic performances in films such as "Stranger Than Fiction". But no film was has asked him to search through the types of places deep, dark required him "everything Must Go". And it reaches most of the challenge.
The Ferrell dislocated presence is something elegant melancholy - even when his character is at its worst and ugliest. There seems never to judge the man he plays, Nick Halsey, who thinks that he has touched the bottom but then concludes that it can continue to fall. Rather, it becomes just that person in ways small and quiet.
And in the hands of first time screenwriter and Director Dan Rush, based on a Raymond Carver short story, "everything Must Go" is a small and quiet film. It may feel a little too amorphous sometimes, but also stimulation allows time for us to ruminate about alongside Nick, and take in all-for better and for worse.
When we meet first Nick, it is being fired from his job as a seller of long date. It reached a peak professionally at the time, it clearly has an alcohol problem and there are vague rumblings about an incident disorderly on a working trip to Denver.
After a quick and impetuous end of vandalism in the parking lot, he arrived at his suburban Phoenix home to find his wife has left, changed the locks and alarm codes, and dispersed his effects on the lawn.
Instead of panic, he scraped together the little money he left and headed the store for some Pabst Blue Ribbon, her drink of choice. (Certainly it is not the kind of large-scale product placement that inspired the recent Morgan Spurlock documentary.)
Then, he proceeded to reorganize furniture as if it was still sitting in his living room, plop down in its inclination and get hammered. For several consecutive days. "everything Must Go" thing really gets right is the day-in, day-out life as a functioning alcoholic: the shakes in the morning, in ingenious ways to find a drink, but you must as drags on the day.
It is perhaps a bit of an obvious metaphor that Nick is awoken brilliant and at the beginning of each day by cold and insistent splashes of water sprinklers, but hey - this is what happens when you pass in the front yard. It also has an awakening of sorts in the form of two new friendships and unlikely.
One is with Samantha (a lovely Rebecca Hall), married, pregnant photographer who just moved by itself in the House of generic tract on the street. Her husband is always working temporarily in New York, but her relationship with Nick adventure in any conventional direction that you might expect.
The other is with Kenny (Christopher Jordan Wallace, who played his father, the late rapper Notorious B.I.G., as a child in "notorious"), a neighborhood kid boredom who rides his bike down the street without purpose. Kenny became a daily companion of Nick and his business partner, help sell broadband equipment exercise, lamps, swords of Samurai and other trinkets which seemed so essential for so long.
Becomes them a relationship father-son of fortune even without effort. But as Nick binding forges with Samantha, it will not in all places obviously mawkish. These people - and Laura Dern in a turn surprisingly poignant in a scene: a former high school classmate - help Nick emerging from the fog. And then only glimmers of the Ferrell, we have known and loved of all these years come shining through.
"everything Must Go" ends on a vague note of the uprising, but it is actually preferable to be sold a false version of happily-ever-after.
"Everything must go," a Roadside Attractions release, is rated r for language and sexual content. Duration: 96 minutes. Three stars out of four.
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Motion Picture Association of America rating definitions:
G - general public. All ages admitted.
PG - Parental guidance suggested. Some elements may not be suitable for children.
PG - 13 - special Parental Guidance strongly suggested for children under 13 years old. Certain types of material may be inappropriate for young children.
R - restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.
NC - 17 - person admitted less than 17 years.
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