Rated R for some sexual content and language
Cast: Will Ferrell, Christopher Jordan Wallace, Rebecca Hall, Michael Pena, Rosalie Michaels, Stephen Root, Laura Dern, Glenn Howerton
Director: Dan Rush
That's not all. She also froze their joint bank accounts, literally leaving Nick with nothing to live on but the remaining cash in his wallet and the chattels decorating the yard of his former abode. At first, this seems unusually cruel. Until we learn his wife is a recovering alcoholic herself, and her actions are the result of painful yet necessary tough love. So how will Nick respond? Rehab? Nope. He ventures to the local store, purchases a six-pack with his remaining bills, ensconces himself in his BarcaLounger beneath a tree, and makes the most of the situation. This guy would have hit rock bottom by now if only he could find it.
Nick is played by Will Ferrell, whose meteoric rise from SNL comedian to A-list movie star was interrupted by the gravitational box office disaster "Land of the Lost." In "Everything Must Go," Ferrell proves that a film needn't be tailored to a particular style comfortable to him. The movie is not a comedy. Its narrative landscape is dotted with a few humorous moments, but the film is more an examination of a desperate soul somehow not cognizant of his own desperation.
Ferrell plays Nick as a hollow shadow of a once fluidly charming man. We see glimpses of that charm from time to time, enough that, while we understand the exasperated actions of his wife, we root for Nick to find the road back toward the emotionally-fulfilled man that temporarily vacated his being. With a face and demeanor that denotes one life shit-kicking too many, Ferrell embodies the role quite well.
With nowhere to go, Nick is granted a favor from a friend on the police force, an officer named Garcia (Michael Pena) who was also Nick's sponsor, although admittedly not a very good one. Garcia obtains a permit for Nick to unload his belongings via a yard sale. Nick is befriended by a curious, likable, heavy-set African-American boy (Christopher Jordan Wallace) willing to help sell in return for baseball lessons. There is also a new tenant on the block... a kind-hearted, pregnant housewife named Samantha (Rebecca Hall) who reaches out to him, probably to combat her own growing emotional angst over an absent husband.
Samantha's attempts at consoling Nick are accepted to a degree, but also met with a lazy resignation. She suggests he get help. "I've tried help," is Nick's cryptically vague response. He points out his own knack for seeing the pain in others, and justifies his current existence with the most indolent of observations... "Everybody's life is a wreck. The only difference between me and everyone else is that I no longer have walls to hide behind." To him, this may sound profound, yet he doesn't realize that detecting the pain in others is not a gift, and it speaks volumes when your own emotional state is the result of socio-philosophical lowballing.
Nick does uncover flickering signs of hope beckoning him out of his dilapidation, including a high school yearbook. He peruses it, comes across a kind message written by a girl he doesn't remember all that well. Her name is Delilah (Laura Dern). He tracks her down. Her response to him is interesting. She instantly sizes up his reasons for locating her. (If you show up on the doorstep of an old friend with a high school yearbook nestled in your armpit, either you're the star of a bizarre new reality show or your life has taken a dreadful turn.) She understands his situation, and offers him moments of kindness but no emotional indulgence. She's too stable for that. A survivor of her own travails, the most powerful aspect of her compassion is that it's measured. True salvation can only come from within. She provides him not with a shoulder upon which to cry, but with a seed upon which to grow again.
Writer/director Dan Rush has crafted a story that siphons itself through a marsh of unsettling realities toward an understanding that while rock bottom is an omnipresent possibility, it comes with the truth that once all the muck and residue of hardship is washed away, the sole being will emerge and the possibility of re-growth with it. All is never truly lost.
* * * out of * * * * stars
