Everything Must Go

Raymond Carver's story "Why Don't You Dance?" only provides the set-up for writer-director Dan Rush's Everything Must Go, but the film manages to convey Carver's despairing tone. Will Ferrell reins in his wacky persona, portraying the hapless Nick Halsey as a petulant overgrown child. As the movie opens, Nick faces one humiliation after another. He loses his sales job. Then he arrives home to find that his wife has left him, frozen their bank account, locked him out of their house, and dumped all of their belongings on the lawn. Being an alcoholic, Nick responds by sitting in his front yard and drinking himself into a stupor. Eventually, he sets up a little outdoor home for himself, and begins to engage with the world again, thanks to the influence of a local latchkey kid (Christopher Jordan Wallace) and the kindhearted young pregnant woman (the luminous Rebecca Hall) moving in across the street. Perhaps Rush resolves things a bit too neatly, suggesting he doesn't quite grasp (or wants to avoid) the shattering depth of his material, but, to his credit, Everything Must Go doesn't soft-pedal the despair that Nick's midlife existential crisis engenders, and that feeling lingers long after the closing credits.