Everything Must Go | Review

For its initial book publication, Raymond Carver’s lilting, tender short story “Why Don’t You Dance?” was misread, mangled and diminished by cancerous editor Gordon Lish; it is done equally few favors by the Will Ferrell indie-cred vehicle, Everything Must Go. As an alcoholic salesman who seeks redemption after he is reduced to living on his front lawn, Ferrell is unsure and unpersuasive the whole way, never daring to leave the comfort zone of his familiar frat-boy-who-never-grew-up persona. First-time writer-director Dan Rush’s over-polished script is full of pat lessons and neatly packaged character arcs; visually, he settles for generic TV-style coverage. An underused Laura Dern brings the lone spark of warmth and authenticity to the proceedings, despite appearing in only one, implausible scene. Calculated but never crafty, this dull dramedy is a great example of how so-called “independent” American cinema has become nearly as beholden to formula as the mainstream it pretends to define itself against.

From the outset, Rush betrays his source material. In the Carver story, the main character (for reasons never revealed) himself moves all of the furniture and possessions out of his house and onto the front lawn, methodically reproducing the same arrangement outside as had existed inside. The gesture is signature Carver: mysterious, never reducible to an easy motivation or need, yet somehow all the more illuminating for it.

Rush instead ejects all ambiguity and resorts to tired screenwriting tactics: In the movie, it’s the fed-up wife who tosses our likable screw-up of a hero’s stuff out of the house after he tanks his job as a mid-level corporate salesman. Tack on a contrived “deadline” plot device — Ferrell has three days to “get himself together” before the cops will arrest him for living on his lawn — and the wheels of inevitable resolution are set in motion.

Ferrell’s Nick Halsey experiences little of the deep disconnection and loneliness of a Carver character. Instead, he is surrounded with a healthy support system of friends, generous strangers, and even one woman (played by Dern) who, despite having not seen him since high school, welcomes him unannounced into her home and soon after assures him, “You have a good heart.”

The supporting characters each come equipped with a digestible dream, a poignant anecdote, and an obstacle he or she is preordained to overcome.

There’s the hot neighbor wife, married to the smug nemesis (an insultingly wasted — and in one cartoonish S&M gag, just plain insulted — Stephen Root). There’s the sympathetic neighbor, played by a game but under-served Rebecca Hall, whose own personal dilemma conveniently dovetails with that of Halsey’s. There’s the de-facto Ferrell sidekick, an overweight middle-school kid who, after a minute of lame fat-joke exchanges with Halsey, comes to feel more secure about his heft. Problem solved, sitcom-style!

Equally offensive is the way the movie name-checks alcoholism without sincerely exploring it. Rush and Ferrell lazily run the gamut of alcoholic movie-shorthand; the “shivers of withdrawal” scene is so phony that sweat-soaked Ferrell seems about to cross over into a Ben Stiller-esque ‘Tropic Thunder’ parody. Strangely, the movie completely ignores the likelihood that Halsey’s drinking would in reality be a sign of dissatisfaction with some aspect of his conventional middle-class existence. Instead, it’s just a lingering immaturity. As a result, it’s difficult not to wonder if “drinking problem” was selected as Halsey’s weakness merely to maximize product placement opportunities for Pabst Blue Ribbon.

Needless to say, Rush’s movie doesn’t come close to matching the nuanced humanism of Robert Altman’s Carver-based ‘Short Cuts,’ or the ecstatic expressionism of John Cassavetes’ ‘A Woman Under the Influence,’ another movie about a troubled character in conflict with suburban surroundings. There’s a lot of drinking in Cassavetes movies, but they are never about boozing. Instead, drinking is a symptom of resistance, a symptom of his characters’ inability to adequately fit into the confines of their social environments; in its own turbulent, ugly, sometimes liberating way, drinking is a way for his characters to keep some kind of hold on, some connection to, their own humanity.

The “influence” Gena Rowlands is under is not that of alcohol, but of the stultifying forces of middle class America that have made her life a “Doll’s House”-like prison. Rush’s movie stands in sharp, disturbing contrast to Cassavetes’ spirit of distinctly American individualism and personal freedom — here the insipid suburban middle class life is not a cage to be escaped, but to be broken back into.

It is perhaps no surprise that a director with a TV advertising background would make a movie so fraught with product placement (a 7-Eleven Slurpee is otherwise needlessly included in a scene that, due to strategic marketing, is also featured in the trailer), and which promotes the idea of corporate salesmanship as a route to self-awakening (Ferrell’s middle-school protégé absorbs advice from ‘The Sales Bible,’ whose book-cover — more tie-in revenue? — he holds conspicuously cheated towards camera). “I’m selling everything,” exclaims Halsey, in a moment of what passes in this movie for epiphany, “and it feels great!”

Rating 1 stars