Will Ferrell Tries Not to Be Funny in the Everything Must Go Trailer

Casting Will Ferrell in a dark adaptation of a Raymond Carver story sounded like a pretty intriguing idea when the synopsis for Everything Must Go first surfaced before its premiere at the Toronto Film Festival. In it, he plays an alcoholic who loses his job, only to come home and find that his wife has locked him out and scattered all of his possessions on the lawn. So begins Ferrell's three-day yard sale, where everything must... never mind. But wait, why does an adaptation of a Carver story look so uplifting?

I'll go ahead and admit a bit of personal bias here: I think the film's source material, Why Don't You Dance, is maybe one of the most moving, heartbreaking and masterful short stories ever written, and the idea of some guy fleshing it out into a quirky dramedy about an alcoholic's redemption doesn't sit too well with me. In fact, go ahead and take a few minutes off of work and read the story here. It takes ten minutes or so, and will give you more to think about than six American Beauty rip-offs combined.

Now, onto the trailer. It really does look a lot like an American Beauty ripoff, except possibly even more quirky. Ferrell gets sprayed by the sprinkler while sleeping in his yard, trips over some recycling bins while trying to climb a fence and befriends an overweight African-American kid while various indie-pop songs set a well-worn tone. I really feel like there should be some rule against using Carver's name in a trailer if the movie turns his story into a connect-the-dots tragi-comedy with an inevitable redemptive ending.

That said, as with Stranger than Fiction, Ferrell looks like he does a nice job downplaying his comedic impulses and straddling the line between a pathetic loser and someone who's sort of likable. And then there's Rebecca Hall, who has been been pretty unstoppable so far in pretty much everything. So maybe a great cast can elevate the tired material?

Verdict: At least read the short story first.