The “SNL†alum has forged a spottily funny, multimillion-dollar career playing outrageous cartoons and juvenile man-children who streak naked through keggers, engage in comic brawls where no one really gets hurt and occasionally try to take over the world. Hardly any of them exist in anything we would consider the real world. In “Everything Must Go,†it’s as if the bitter aftertaste of his entire canon of filmic behavior (sans 2005’s surrealist dramedy “Stranger Than Fictionâ€) has caught up with him, leaving him physically broken, emotionally dead and virtually homeless.
He plays Nick Halsey, a recovering alcoholic who, after a devastating relapse, loses both his corporate sales job and his wife, who has thrown his belongings on the front yard and locked him out of their house. After a few penniless days of wallowing in self-pity and getting hammered on PBR, he listens to the advice his sponsor (Michael Pena) and turns his abject situation into a yard sale with the help of a conveniently fatherless African-American boy down the street (Christopher Jordan Wallace).
First-time writer-director Dan Rush adapted the movie’s premise, loosely, from the Raymond Carver short story “Why Don’t You Dance?,†but film has its own original narrative, factoring in a budding relationship between Nick and Samantha (Rebecca Hall), a pregnant neighbor with an absent husband. “Everything Must Go†is not perfect; the time it takes to develop its robust character study is admirable, but it can’t avoid Hollywoodlike trappings. When the story’s mechanics begin to embrace familiar formulae, the purity of its unvarnished vision of alcoholism comes into question.
But there’s no debating Ferrell’s extraordinary transformation in the part. He plunges ruthlessly into the chasm of a collapsing life, tapping into deep reservoirs of pain and suffering that feel wholly new for him. Ferrell’s line readings, gestures and facial tics have a weathered authenticity that’s subtler than the film surrounding them. “Everything Must Go†probably won’t make much money, and Ferrell will probably return to being kicked in the balls for hefty paychecks, but his absorbing performance here will remain a revelation.
The movie opens Friday at Regal Shadowood 16 and Cinemark Palace 20 in Boca Raton, Regal Delray 18, Cobb Jupiter 18, the Gateway 4 and Frank Sunrise 11 in Fort Lauderdale, Cinemark Paradise 24 in Davie and a number of other cinemas.
