Everything's Going To Be Great rushes through its disjointed family drama about family drama
Allison Janney and Bryan Cranston lead the strained, confused film from director Jon S. Baird.
Photo: Lionsgate
Scottish director Jon S. Baird jumps from an Apple TV+ biopic to a stripped-down dramedy in Everything’s Going To Be Great, his follow-up to 2023’s moderately well-received Tetris. Ironically, watching his newest film attempt to fit all its thematic pieces into a satisfying whole is kind of like watching someone play a game of Tetris. The film follows the Smart family, an eclectic clan of struggling theater fanatics led by patriarch Buddy (Bryan Cranston), who attempts to imbue his same creative fire and joie de vivre into his wife, Macy (Allison Janney), and sons Les (Benjamin Evan Ainsworth) and Derrick (Jack Champion), the former being a fellow thespian and the latter a would-be footballer struggling to be the odd man out in a family of eccentrics. At face value, the idea of the charismatic jock being the outsider of his family is an amusing dynamic, and Champion’s performance is far more compelling than that of his character’s histrionic brother. However, as with most of the threads in Everything’s Going To Be Great, it’s just one of many underdeveloped aspects of a film which is like a plate of spaghetti thrown at a wall, then presented to someone as a meal.
The Smarts start their story in late-’80s Akron, Ohio, financially besieged amidst Buddy’s dreams of being a stage-show success story. But he soon finds a potentially lucrative opportunity: turn a theater in New Jersey into a hit, and get a five-year deal at a more profitable venue in Milwaukee. It’s a gamble, but the family has become used to putting all their chips into Buddy’s harebrained schemes, being carted from place to place as he grasps at his dreams. For her part, Macy admires her husband’s go-getting spirit while quietly harboring resentment over being forced to live as his “normie” wife. This lifestyle is more favorable to the starry-eyed Les, who dodges gay slurs at his high school while envisioning pep talks from dead playwrights and stage actors like Noël Coward and Ruth Gordon. Meanwhile, all Derrick wants to do is stay somewhere long enough to lose his virginity and join a football team.