Directed by Dan Rush
(R)
***
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“The unlikely combination” of Will Ferrell and Raymond Carver pays off brilliantly in this quiet new drama, said Roger Moore in the Orlando Sentinel. Playing a forlorn character created by Carver for a 1981 short story, the star puts aside the broad comedy he’s famed for and comes up with “his best work in ages.” As a just-fired alcoholic who returns home to discover that his wife has changed the locks and moved his possessions to the yard, “Ferrell perfectly underplays his Carver anti-hero.” But the real question “is where writer-director Dan Rush is going with this adaptation,” said Tom Long in The Detroit News. After sleeping on the lawn overnight, Ferrell’s Nick Halsey decides to hold a yard sale. But even then, this “well-made” film turns out to be heading “nowhere, the same place Nick’s life is going.” Rush’s background in commercials is all too evident in the film’s “sweetened-up” subplots and overly polished look, said Lisa Schwarzbaum in Entertainment Weekly. That’s a shame, since Ferrell “looks like he would have no problem going even deeper and darker than Rush could bear.”
