Everything Must Go

The second notable Will Ferrell movie that's supposed to be serious, EVERYTHING MUST GO traces its lineage back to a Raymond Carver short story on which it's only loosely based. It's one of those films that consists of a dozen or so one-liners that fit cleanly into a trailer, but, when viewed in context, are far apart and less funny because of what they're retorting against. In the film, Ferrell plays Nick, a Vice President of one of those businesses that vaguely does business. He's fired after an incident with an intern (which holds all the connotation it really even needs), and he mopes back to his house after slitting the tires of fellow executives, foolishly leaving the instrument behind that holds his name on the outer plating. Upon returning home, Nick sees everything laid out on the lawn and a note from his wife saying she's left him in one of those visual manifestations of a metaphor that wasn't meant to be literal. Nick buys some beers, is obliquely a dick to some high schoolers, and returns home to stake out his lawn. For one thing, EVERYTHING MUST GO has an odd sense of where to place blame, for it seems to have a lot of shit against Nick for his moping, but nothing against any of the people who are blatantly being unhelpful and unrealistic like his bitch wife who's acted in the "because I was wronged I have the right to everything you own" sensibility, his banker who throws his hands up in the air, and his supposed detective cop friend who tells him to get his shit together when he has none of the tools to do that with. There's some nice interaction between Nick and a couple of nice people he meets on the block like an overdrawn black kid on a bike, and an old love-interest from college. Both characters are sort of inexplicably interested in Nick though, as if the flair he had that made him Vice President of a company are simmering beneath his alcohol laden surface. But that isn't apparent in Ferrell's performance, and thus, the device goes unexplained. Furthermore, Nick quasi-befriends a neighbor who's just moved in across the street (Emily Blunt), a photographer who he basically creeps on and bosses around proving another pathetic attempt of the film that even if a piece of shit gives you good advice, they're not exempted from being a piece of shit. But Nick's anti-outrage is just as frustrating as the film's anti-outrage, which places its decades old source material against the justifiable outrage of the 2008 and onward recession. This makes it sort of worthless, for it takes a stance that doesn't make any sense, and then parades about reasons to leave that stance on its periphery.

★ out of Five