@Courtesy of Lionsgate
In ‘Everything’s Going To Be Great‘, screenwriter Steven Rogers ‘I, Tonya’ provided again the protagonist Allison Janney with a script that is fully capable of enhancing her already remarkable acting skills. And she repaid him with a bittersweet performance whose quality and solidity are, as always admirable. If we then add to the cast another of the best contemporary character actors, Bryan Cranston, and the always effective Chris Cooper as supporting cast, that’s pretty much it. All that’s basically left for director Jon S. Baird is to stage the story and characters by working on that particular rhythm that allows comedy and drama to work together in order to develop characters we as an audience can relate to. Thanks to all these elements, ‘Everything’s Going To Be Great’ turns out to be a delightful, at times moving feature film, perhaps not highly original but undoubtedly nicely orchestrated.
The story starts in the late ‘80, in a small town in Ohio, where an unconventional family puts everything at stake on being able to live the dream of producing theater. At least this is what Buddy Smart (Cranston) always wanted to do: all over the years he convinced his wife Macy (Janney) to follow his dream. They have two children: the eldest Derrick (Jack Champion) doesn’t seem too interested in pursuing an artistic career, he prefers playing football. The youngest Lester (Benjamin Evan Ainsworth) on the other end wants to become an anchor at any cost, and sometimes he daydreams about conversations with stage legends like Ruth Gordon, Noel Coward and so on. When the Smart family gets the chance to run a small theater company in New Jersey, with the hope to eventually get something bigger in the autumn in Milwaukee, the decision to move will test everyone’s commitment to Buddy’s tenacity…
Presented in the Spotlight Narrative section, Baird’s feature film finally gave us the chance to see two of our absolute favorite performers acting together for the first time. Janney and Cranston deliver at least a couple of duets that fully testify to their ability to enhance depth and believability to very ordinary human beings, qualities that only the finest actors have possessed in the past, and unfortunately too rarely do in our days. They are by far the best quality of ‘Everything’s Going To Be Great’, since the whole project is based more on developing compelling characters and emotions than an original story. It doesn’t really matter in the end because the idea works really well, in a few moments the audience is truly moved by the family’s struggle, especially Macy’s.
Another quality of the screenplay is that it doesn’t really use too many turning point scenes to build narrative arcs for the characters, it just shows time going by and people healing from pain or simply accepting their mistakes. If you just want to find a flaw in Steve Rogers’ script, it is that all the fun, explicitly comedic material is almost entirely relegated to the first part, while the second one is way more oriented (maybe too much oriented?) towards the dramedy. Again, we are not talking about a plot that is particularly original, we’ve seen this kind of coming-of-age stories many times, but lately with results that are way less accomplishing than what Jon S. Baird achieved.
‘Everything’s Going To Be Great’ is about human beings, their dreams and shortcomings, their emotions and frustrations. It is a joy to experience once again something like this on the big screen, since it has become increasingly difficult to find movies which do that, or at least good ones.
Rate: B
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