Everything's Going to Be Great

by Mike McGranaghan

A day after screening Everything’s Going to Be Great, I’m still struggling to figure out what kind of movie it wants to be. The story starts off as a broadly comic tale about a family of “theater folk,” then abruptly turns into a dour melodrama. Humorous flights of fancy rub up against brazenly sentimental moments, creating an uneven tone. There are two potentially good films here, they’ve just weirdly been assembled into one.

Lester Smart (Benjamin Evan Ainsworth) is a theater obsessed kid who often daydreams that legends like Ruth Gordon and William Inge give him advice. He comes by his obsession naturally. Dad Buddy (Bryan Cranston) is a larger-than-life stage director and mom Macy (Allison Janney) is similarly involved in productions. Only older brother Derrick (Jack Champion) has no interest in the family business. When Buddy gets a risky opportunity that will find them either running a theater in a major city or losing what little they have, he convinces everyone to roll the dice.

That’s the first half of the picture. It’s filled with jokes about how preoccupied the Smarts are with the theater. Buddy, in particular, has a comically minimal sense of the outside world. Several of the jokes are quite funny, although the movie lays it on a bit thick in spots. The best scenes contrast Derrick with everyone else. He thinks they’re nuts, so that familial clash is humorous.

The second half finds the Smarts moving in with a relative, played by Chris Cooper, and this is where it more clearly goes off track. I won’t tell you why they go there, but I will say the movie takes a pretty hard swing into dramatic territory at this point. Suddenly the story is tackling weighty themes and growing increasingly downbeat. Perhaps the desire was to show what happens to this theatrical family in a time of crisis. If so, comedy and drama would need to be woven together more carefully. Presented here, the transition is jarring.

Worse, the film has an off-puttingly artificial ending where everybody’s problems are magically resolved through a heart-to-heart talk or a contrived plot manipulation. Right when it wants to deliver an emotional impact, it fumbles.

Unsurprisingly given the participation of Cranston, Janney, and Cooper, the performances are excellent. That just makes you wish the plot did them more justice. Parts of Everything’s Going to Be Great provide entertainment, but director Jon S. Baird and writer Steven Rogers aren’t able to make the two halves fit together in a satisfying manner.

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