Everything's Going to Be Great
Nostalgic, theatrical dramedy mostly lives up to its title.
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I’ve always been much more of a movie man than I ever was a theater kid, but if you cast actors as accomplished as Bryan Cranston, Allison Janney and Chris Cooper in a stage-centric dramedy it’s gonna get my attention. The film is “Everything’s Going to Be Great” (now available on VOD) and it mostly lives up to its title.
Buddy Smart (Cranston) is a regional theater director who places a greater emphasis on his dreams as opposed to his family’s financial stability. Buddy’s wife Macy (Janney) is far more religious than her husband and does what she can to makes ends meet. Their sons 16-year-old Derrick (Jack Champion) and Lester (Benjamin Evan Ainsworth) couldn’t be any more dissimilar. Derrick has zero interest in the family business and is focused on making the football team or getting laid. Lester is longing for his big break and will often crash curtain calls for shows in which he didn’t even appear.
Circumstances move the family from Ohio to New Jersey to Kansas with Buddy ultimately having his sights set on a plum position in Milwaukee. Along the way we encounter attractive actor Kyle (Simon Rex) and Macy’s estranged brother Walter (Cooper).
“Everything’s Going to Be Great” as directed by Scottish director Jon S. Baird (“Tetris”) and scripted by “I, Tonya” scribe Steven Rogers (his father was also a regional theater director lending the proceedings a certain authenticity) is the sort of movie that doesn’t get made often anymore. It’s a character-based story chronicling a dysfunctional family’s ups (few) and downs (many). It’s also a primo piece of nostalgic filmmaking taking place in the late 1980s. It feels a lot like some of the Sundance Film Festival selections that dotted the late 1990s and early-to-mid aughts and is rife with humor and heart.
Cranston, Janney and Cooper are all expectedly solid and are strongly supported by younger actors Champion (I’ve liked this kid’s work elsewhere in flicks such as “Scream VI” and “Freaky Tales”) and Ainsworth (“The Haunting of Bly Manor”).
The picture has an abrupt tonal shift midway through making the first and second halves feel like different flicks. Luckily, I dug both movies and was granted insight into a subculture to which I wouldn’t normally subscribe. The filmmakers’ enthusiasm translates.