Everything Must Go [Celluloid Hero]

Everything Must Go (2010)

Will Ferrell has been the star of two previous [Celluloid Hero] features, one bad and one worse. With "Everything Must Go", Ferrell takes a more serious role, still infusing it with comic relief, but for the most part keeping it dramatic.

Ferrell plays Nick, a recovering alcoholic who is struggling to stay sober. A certain event during a business trip leads to a relapse, which leads to him losing his job. When he arrives home from being fired, he finds his wife gone, the locks on the house changed, and all of his belongings spread across the front lawn. It's the series of crushing events that border on the "country song" cliche, but manage to come across very sincere thanks to a strong script.

With help from his AA sponsor and a neighborhood kid, Nick begins to piece his life together. He organizes his belongings into his own sort of home, an outdoor man-cave. The police inform him he has just five days to clean up before the town takes everything, and Nick is spurred on to hold a literal yard sale.

There's something sad about seeing a person's life on display. It really made me look around and think of all the stuff I had, what was valuable and what was expendable. How much of your stuff are you holding on to just for sentimental value? How much could you get rid of without really missing it?

Sometimes I feel the need to watch a sad dramatic movie. I enjoy the catharsis of it, and this movie definitely packed a few heavy punches. Even when I thought things were easing up, there are a few moments in the last few scenes that knocked the wind out of me. The past two Ferrell movies bombed by [CH] standards, but this brought him back into the plus column.

On the [Celluloid Hero] scale, "Everything Must Go" gets a 7 out of 10.