The film revolves around that man named Nick Halsey, a professional salesman who loses his wife and his job on the same day. Things turn out to be a bad path for Nick, as she starts living in the front garden facing this miserable life.
This isn't Ferrell's first dramatic role; he played seriocomic leading men in Stranger Than Fiction and Woody Allen's Melinda and Melinda. But it's the first one that provides a glimpse at his possible future as a Bill Murray-style character actor.
I was not waiting for a punch line. I was not primed to laugh. I accepted Ferrell as Nick and, because of that, I was able to enjoy Everything Must Go on its own terms.
Taking stock and letting go -- of superfluous things, of worn-out love -- is a strong theme. But the progression of the script is like Nick's self-help program. We're familiar with the steps.
Rush draws on the intense attachment we can feel for the mundane objects in our lives. For Nick, these things are talismans from a past that promised a lot more than it delivered.
Everything Must Go is a pleasantly engaging, entertaining human portrait - a journey that doesn't physically stray very far, but which treads a million metaphorical miles within its main character as he attempts to go from broken man to redeemed man.
