Everything Must Go
Tags: dark, boring, home movie

Plot synopsis:
Salesman Nick Halsey (Will Ferrell) is fired from his job of 16 years following an unspecified incident in Denver related to his alcoholism. He sits in the parking garage after leaving the office, drinking from a flask. He then takes the Swiss Army Knife he was given as a farewell gift and stabs it into his supervisor's car tires, only to leave the knife (which has his name on it) and run away when he is unable to pull it back out from the tire. He immediately drives to a convenience store and buys a large amount of beer. When he returns home, he finds his wife is gone, the locks have been changed, and his belongings have been strewn all over his front lawn. His wife has left him a letter telling him that she is leaving him, also over the Denver incident, and to not contact her.
Nick spends the night on the lawn. In the morning, he leaves to buy beer and food, returning to find his company car being taken back. In addition, his credit cards no longer work, he has been blocked from the joint checking account he has with his wife, and his phone service is terminated. When the police ask him to vacate the premises, Nick gets them to contact his AA sponsor, Detective Frank Garcia (Michael Peña), who provides him with a permit for a yard sale, allowing him three more days before he must move on. Nick gets a neighborhood boy, Kenny (Christopher Jordan Wallace), to help him sell his possessions, assuring Kenny he will pay him for the help, and also that he will teach him to play baseball. The first day's sale is unsuccessful as Nick is unwilling to let items go.
Nick meets his new neighbor, a pregnant young woman named Samantha (Rebecca Hall), and invites her to his backyard. There, he tells her that he had been sober for six months until attending a conference in Denver, during which he had gotten blackout drunk with a female coworker; he awoke with no memory of the night before, and soon learned that she had lodged a complaint against him, setting the stage for his firing.
Nick then finds a yearbook with a friendly message from an old classmate, Delilah (Laura Dern), whom he tracks down and visits. The reunion is awkward, but Delilah nevertheless gives Nick a hug and tells him that he is a good person deep down.
Now completely broke, Nick has to go without alcohol and soon experiences withdrawal. Samantha gives him a Valium and tells him that he needs help. He replies that she is no better than him because she puts up with her husband's drinking and frequent absences. Samantha storms off, angry and hurt.
The next morning Nick awakes to find Kenny has arranged his belongings on the lawn and has put price tags on them. Most of the things get sold by that evening. Nick apologizes to Samantha, who admits that he was right and that she had told her husband to come home or get a divorce. She, Nick and Kenny then go out to dinner. In the restaurant restroom, Nick encounters his former supervisor, who explains that the incident in Denver probably did not happen. They fired the female employee he got drunk with because it was discovered she has a history of suing fellow employees for sexual harassment, and that Nick probably would have gotten his job back if only he hadn't slashed the supervisor's tires. Nick expresses little reaction to this news, but when the supervisor leaves a glass of beer in the restroom, Nick takes it back to him without drinking a drop.
After dinner, Nick meets with Frank, and answers Frank's phone while he steps out of his office. The caller is Nick's wife, Catherine, telling Frank she is waiting at his house. Nick confronts Frank, who admits Catherine has been staying with him ever since she left Nick. The two men have a fight, and Frank says Catherine deserves better than Nick. It is also divulged that Nick and his wife were both recovering alcoholics. Later, while Frank drives Nick home, he observes that, because Catherine got sober and Nick didn't, their marriage had little chance of succeeding, and proceeds to list the ways Nick failed her as a husband. He then hands Nick a packet of divorce papers for him to sign, along with some spending money and keys to the house. Nick tells Frank to drop him off on the nearest curb; before he gets out of the car, he asks Frank to tell his wife he's sorry. He walks home the rest of the way, at one point stopping to look into the convenience store where he regularly bought beer, but moves on.
The next day, he settles up with Kenny – including repaying him for what he skimmed from Kenny's profits for beer money – and receives an appreciative hug from Samantha, whose husband has come home. She hands him the Polaroid photo she took of him a few days prior, with the message from her fortune cookie taped to the bottom, which says "Everything is not yet lost."

Review: The Other Guys was pretty good, Step Brothers was funny in parts, but this one totally takes the cake for being a great drama, and schools anyone who thinks Will Ferrell can't do anything but comedy.
Kenny and Nick strike up an odd, but warm relationship with each other and when Nick is informed by his AA sponsor (Pena) that he must move all his stuff off his lawn in three days, he works with Kenny to help them hold a big yard sale.A sub-plot involves Nick getting acquainted with the woman across the street who has just moved to the neighborhood and is awaiting her husband's arrival.
The plot works fine without them, and I believe that if we saw Nick's wife in the film we'd get too many arguments between the two which may result in (a) believability being low and (b) a possibility for Ferrell's comedy side to sneak in.
Everything Must Go is the story of Nick Halsey (Ferrell), a struggling alcoholic who, in the first 10 minutes of the movie, has been laid of from his job and kicked out of his house by his wife, all within the same day.
I will start by saying I thought the acting of everyone involved, especially Will Ferrell and Christopher Jordan Wallace, was superb and a highlight of the movie.
I did particularly enjoy watching the relationship between Nick Halsey and Wallace's "Kenny Loftus", and thought that the filmmakers did a good job pairing the two actors up.
Overall, I do believe that the movie was well made, with an interesting story and fantastic acting, but the mood of the film was a little heavier than what I was looking for..
"Good without the bad ain't no good at all." After Nick (Ferrell) gets fired from his job of 16 years he comes home to find his wife has changed the locks on his doors and all of his stuff is on the lawn.
Will Ferrell plays Nick Halsey, who arrives home from being fired from his job to find all his belongings on his front lawn.
Eventually, Nick befriends one of the kids in his neighborhood, and together they hold a yard sale on his front lawn to sell off everything that he owns.This is really a story about hitting rock bottom and figuring out a way to start over again.
Will Ferrell plays a Sales Executive named Nick Halsey who at the beginning of the film is being fired from his job due to his problems with alcohol.
Will Ferrell, Christopher Wallace, and Rebecca Hall (who I first came to love in Ben Affleck's flick The Town) all give great performances and the success of the film relies entirely on them.
Maybe that wasn't the director's intention but that's how I'll classify it.I give it 3 stars out of 4.Just a very simple, and ultimately touching, story about a man who's life is falling apart and it is purely his own fault.It is nice to see Will Ferrell ACT and not play his normal over the top persona in comedies.This is a QUIET movie.
'EVERYTHING MUST GO': Three and a Half Stars (Out of Five)Will Ferrell tries his hand at more serious comedy-drama again (after the likes of 2006's 'STRANGER THAN FICTION') with this tale of a relapsed alcoholic who loses his job and wife on the same day and resorts to living on his front lawn.
While trying to sell his stuff Nick befriends a new neighbor across the street (Hall) and a local neighborhood kid (Wallace).Like I said the movie is surprisingly dramatic for a Will Ferrell movie and he pulls off his performance impressively.
Will Ferrell nails the helplessness of his situation, he drinks and along the way through relationships with a young kid, his pregnant neighbour and an old school flame he realises that he's a good man, that he has something to offer the world, that perhaps he doesn't need the booze after all.
I think that Will Ferrell is one of those actors that can do a pretty solid job of mixing comedy with drama, and I like when he plays human characters.
Unfortunately here he is stuck in a movie that pretends to be this grounded character drama about a broken man who's lost everything, while it's actually just an absurd story that doesn't fit into any real context and meanders along until it thankfully comes to it's disastrous end.
Based on a short story by Raymond Carver, Ferrell's Nick Halsey gets fired in the opening scene and then goes home to find out that his wife put all of his things on the lawn and changed the locks on the door.
One of my favorite director's these days is Sofia Coppola who I think does a great job at instilling a deep sense of real-life into her movies.
Watched Will Ferrel in his most mature film, "Everything Must Go"It's about a an alcoholic who loses his job and his wife in the same week and rethinks his life.A thoughtful and down to earth movie about finding what it takes to start over."They say every man needs protection, they say every man must fall"And so this is a movie that begins at the fall.
It not that bad but I find it utterly pointless movie.Story of a man having a bad days, first he got fired from his job, then got thrown out of his house, his wife deactivate his bank account.
Without Will this would have been straight to VDO store and maybe left there totally untouched.The good thing about this movie is – I will likely don't remember I have even watched it in a week time.
But this movie does have the perfect dose of both the humor and drama, and it never gets caught up trying to do both at the same time.However, the one minor problem i did have with the film was the ending.
"Everything Must Go" is a comedy - drama movie which shows us a man who after being fired from his job due to his alcoholic relapses and losing his wife, trying to start over.
I really liked it because makes it truly understandable for everyone how he feels about all of these, his agony and depression.Finally I have to say that "Everything Must Go" is a really worth seeing movie and I strongly recommend it because as I said before it combines drama with comedy..
Will Ferrell who's one of the best funny men working in the business today takes a role that's offbeat and uncommon here, yet his choice turns out for a good entertaining and emotional film of discovery.
Some characters seemed a little "Hollywood" to me, but some dark comedy moments and unexpected alcoholic truths made the movie definitely worth watching.
I hadn't seen something quite like this since the 80's movie "Less Than Zero" with Robert Downey Jr. Ferrell played Nicholas, a lush that just lost his job and his wife due to his habit.
The movie plays out on his front lawn with all of his belongings as his wife moved all his stuff outside and had all the locks changed."Everything Must Go" dives in to the dark and pitiful world of alcoholics.
At best, it's going to be one of those films that will find its market several years from when it was first released.For a start, it has Will Ferrell as the leading man - an actor constantly linked with madcap, silly throwaway comedies.
And, possibly worse still, it's very sad.Will Ferrell plays Nick Halsey - an alcoholic who, on the same day, gets fired and finds out his wife is leaving him by returning home to find she has thrown all his possessions out onto the front lawn.
Another thing you should know is that the film doesn't really move from there - the whole ninety minutes is spent on Ferrell's front/rear lawn (and a lot of people seem to have critisised it for this).What little story there is, centres on themes rather than moving the script along.
After Nick (Will Farrell) is fired from his sales job, mostly because of his alcoholism, he comes home and finds that his wife has kicked him --and all of his stuff out of the house and onto the front lawn.
I thought this film was going to be another stupid , fantasy comedy created by the actor Will Ferrell who has been in such movies as Anchorman and Step-Brothers.
Next once Ferrell's character when he gets home and what has happened is what really kick starts the movie.The movie has all the aspects such as comedy, drama, seriousness and many more such things.
Anyways, "Everything Must Go" is an intended drama with a few comedic moments starring Ferrell as Nick Halsey, an Arizonian alcoholic who lives in front of his lawn with all his personal belongings; due to the fact that his exasperated wife cannot tolerate the Nick no more so she placed all his belongings on the lawn and also changed all the locks to their home.
I guess that many people will feel confused or disappointed after watching Everything Must Go, because the mere presence of Will Ferrell in the leading role suggests the fact that the film is a comedy.
But the opportunity was squandered in scene after scene, and with the exception of the typical outstanding work of Rebecca Hall as Halsey's neighbor, I was left wondering "Who were those people?" Most disappointing of all, Will Ferrell's performance as a very-non-recovering alcoholic left his character as wooden, uninteresting and - most importantly -- unappealing.
Everything Must Go (2010) *** (out of 4) Will Ferrell turns in the best performance of his career as Nick Halsey, an alcoholic who is fired from his job only to then come home and realize that his wife has left him and changed the locks to the door.
One of the main components of this film is the alcoholism of Ferrell's character and the detrimental effects it has had on his life, costing him his job, marriage and home.
When everything is lost and we are left with nothing, is it really the end of it?Watch this movie and you may be able to answer these for yourself."Making friends is not always easy, but the ones that you have, make sure that you can trust them with your heart." "Maintaining relations requires revisions; so make the things straight as many times as it is required." "Understand the difference between giving up and letting go!".
Everything Must Go is a better than average movie with a pretty good story at this very depressing and is much more of a drama than a comedy,there are plenty of funny parts but it is not something you could consider a feel good comedy.Will Ferrell delivers a very impressive performance,it is nothing like what he has done in the past,if your a fan of him in movies liked Anchorman or Step Brothers,don't expect this to be another one of those,thats what I put the movie on expecting and it certainly wasn't,but I was impressed with his acting,it was very deep.I think the movie definitely needed more time to develop the other characters,we got to learn plenty about Nick,but we didn't get to know enough about the other characters he communicates with in this movie,also I would haver liked to see his ex-wife in at least one scene.If your a fan of very dramatic comedies then I would say check it out,but if your a fan of Will Ferrell for his usual goofy comedies,you won't enjoy this,however,if your interested in seeing him in different more unique roles,then you should check out Everything Must Go.An alcoholic sales exec decides to love on his front lawn when his job and marriage come to an end on the same day and he can't afford to own a house..
This movie really put his acting talents to the test, and Will Ferrell rose to the occasion and delivered a great performance and made this movie turn out rather nice.The story is about Nick Halsey (played by Will Ferrell) who gets fired from his job, after a series of unfortunate events which mostly included alcohol, only to come home to find that his wife has thrown him out, put his stuff out on the front lawn, and changed all the locks to their home.
But as reality sinks in, Nick comes to realize that things must change, and he strikes up a partnership with a young boy in the neighborhood to look after his stuff while Nick tidies up loose ends in his life.Actually, the story told in this movie was rather interesting and quite captivating.
What makes it work so nicely is the acting performances put on by the various actors and actresses throughout the movie, along with the colorful characters and good dialogue."Everything Must Go" is not an average comedy, as there isn't all that many laughs to be had in the movie, but this is more the likes of a comedy that sinks in and sticks with you, especially given the absurd storyline and the realism there is to it.I highly recommend that you watch "Everything Must Go", because Will Ferrell is nothing short of spectacular in this movie.
After years on "Saturday Night Live" and numerous comedic roles, Will Ferrell takes a more serious, almost dark role as a man who loses his wife and job, and then finds himself locked out of his house with his credit cards canceled, and so he simply decides to live on his lawn.
Rush prefers to focus on capturing what it's like when a troubled person's life can't get any worse.Despite being excellent at his job, Nick Halsey gets laid off in good part due to past drinking problems.
His setup attracts the attention of a young boy named Kenny (Christopher Jordan Wallace) whose mom is taking care of a sick person down the street as well as his new neighbor, Samantha (Rebecca Hall), whose pregnant with a husband who constantly travels.The script gives us no real sense of Nick's wife, job or any of his previous attachments, so we don't really empathize with him being caught between the things he has loved in the recent past and the opportunities appearing before him for a better future.
Nick is not the easiest character to love or understand, but Ferrell cues us in to what's going on in his mind the best he can.Even with some mistakes, "Everything Must Go" tells an honest story about personal tragedy and how we cope with the moments that bring our dignity to an all-time low.~Steven CThanks for reading!
When people make bleak comedies about alcoholics it tends to be labelled as a tragedy.Everything Must Go starts out with Nick Halsey (Will Ferrell) getting fired in his job as a salesman and then when he gets home he finds his belongings on the lawn, his wife has changed the locks, taken his savings and kicked him out.We find out that Halsey is an alcoholic, has temper issues and decides to live on the lawn with his belongings.
Everything Must GoErecting a delousing booth adjacent to a yard sale is an excellent way to make some extra cash during the summer.Unfortunately, the clothing on the front lawn of the loser in this drama is not there for rummaging.After he is fired from his high paying executive job for excessive drinking, Nick (Will Ferrell) thinks that he has hit rock bottom.However, upon returning home, he discovers that things have just worsened.Lining his front lawn is everything he owns.
Will Ferrell fans who liked Melinda and Melinda and Stranger Than Fiction will not be surprised by his performance as Nick Halsey in this movie.
The writing is sparse, but it still makes you think and this idea goes into the film as well.Will Ferrell plays Nick Halsey, the ex-Vice President of a Regional Sales Office.
On the day he's fired from his job in Phoenix, for falling off the wagon and waking up in the hotel room of an associate who files a suit for harassment, Nicholas Halsey comes home to find his stuff on the front lawn, the locks changed, and a farewell note from his wife.With his bank account frozen, his credit cards and phone cancelled, and his company car gone, he takes up residence on the lawn.A cop who's his AA sponsor tells him he can sit there for five days as if it's a garage sale, then he'll face arrest.With help from a chubby kid on a bicycle, a pregnant neighbour, and an old high school acquaintance, Nick goes on a beer-soaked odyssey, from his front-yard easy chair...Not since stranger than fiction, has Ferrell been this brilliant.
Will Ferrell stars as Nick who loses his job, punctures his boss' tire, and finds out his wife not only left him, but also locked him out of the house with all his belongings in the front yard.
Writer/director Dan Rush has made a fascinating film that is too good to pass up.Nick Halsey (Will Ferrell) is fired from his job of 16 years.
Basically alcoholic Nick Halsey (Will Ferrell) had an unspecified drinking related incident happen in Denver, and due to this he is fired from his job as a salesman after sixteen years, after returning home he finds that the locks have been changed and his wife has left him, with a letter telling him not to contact her, and all his belongings are spread across the lawn.
You do feel some level of sympathy for the main character (and some supporting ones), but not much.The humor is OK, not too many gags, but not very funny either.The story does seem to take too long to come to that particular end, which could have been an interesting experiment had the whole "guy living at his front lawn" been taken a level higher, but, like we noticed before, the movie is not taking real risks.All things considered, it's worth checking out..