THE STORY – As the Smart family wrestle with their oversized dreams, they come to realize that the struggle to find your voice and your place in the world can happen no matter what stage of life you’re in.
THE CAST – Benjamin Evan Ainsworth, Jack Champion, Chris Cooper, Bryan Cranston, Allison Janney & Simon Rex
THE TEAM – Jon S. Baird (Director) & Steven Rogers (Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 95 Minutes
Bless their hearts, where would we be without great actresses grand-dame-ing it through blowsy, snarky roles in projects beneath them? Allison Janney has made a career out of it, bringing her unfailing comic eye and knack for nailing punchlines, both comedic and dramatic, to projects as diverse as the Chuck Lorre sitcom “Mom,” for which she won two Emmys, and the Steven Rogers-penned “I, Tonya,” for which she won an Oscar. She’s doing it with Rogers again for “Everything’s Going to Be Great,” a family dramedy that flips the script on several tropes but never quite manages to transcend them. She’s not the only reason the film works as well as it does, but she’s a big part of it and a perfect example of why the film succeeds: Everyone involved is committed to making it as entertaining as it can possibly be.
The Smarts are not your typical family. Dad Buddy (Bryan Cranston) is the Artistic Director of a regional theater in Akron, OH, Mom Macy (Janney) is his girl Friday, and sons Derrick (Jack Champion) and Lester (Benjamin Evan Ainsworth) work at the theater after school, to Derrick’s dismay and Lester’s joy. Every Smart wants more, but they want it differently – Buddy wants to work for a bigger theater, Macy wants not to have to worry about money, Lester wants to be a stage professional already, and poor Derrick just wants to play football like a normal teenage boy. Life has other plans, though, and two big moves in quick succession leave them reeling, unsure of how to move forward. Will they keep dreaming big, or will they end up settling for something more practical?
Seeing a family in which the sporty son is the odd man out is, without a doubt, incredibly refreshing. Rogers’s screenplay milks it for all it’s worth, with Buddy making cracks about how Derrick’s love of football is “just a phase” and the whole family singing “Modern Major General” from “The Pirates of Penzance” on a road trip to a new home. In the way of most comedies, though, Rogers prefers to tell us about these characters and what theater means to them instead of showing us. That’s usually the less interesting of the two options, and that’s certainly the case here. However, with performers as good at chewing scenery as Cranston and Janney, the telling is at least plenty of fun to listen to.
Cranston and Janney can take it if that seems like a backhanded compliment. They know they’re above this material just as much as the audience does, but they take it seriously enough to make every emotional beat land just as hard as the laugh lines. Each of them gets a deeply emotional moment with Lester that hits home because they sell the clichéd sentiments of Rogers’s dialogue while keeping their emotions grounded and even subtle. They’re not above grandstanding when the moment calls for it, though, and they’re comic dynamite when they do. A bedtime argument that becomes a game to get the last word is just zinger after zinger, and watching the two old pros go at each other is worth the price of admission all on its own.
It’s probably too much to ask for Ainsworth and Champion to be up to Cranston and Janney’s level, but they’re just not as much fun to watch. Both acquit themselves well (although Ainsworth is a bit too closely modeled on Chris Colfer’s Kurt Hummel from television’s “Glee” for comfort). Still, the material for the boys isn’t as strong as it is for their parents, a disappointment considering that the family dynamic is so rife with possibility to upend expectations. Rogers does this at points, but only in small ways revolving around the boys fitting into various school settings. They both have strong comic instincts, so it’s hard not to wish they had more opportunities to play around with a dynamic that’s so different from what we’re used to seeing, where the “weird” theater-loving son has the upper hand over the “normal” sporty son at home. Fewer scenes of bagpipe practice (funny though they are) and more exploring the family dynamic, especially at the theater, would have gone a long way.
Even though it’s easy to want more, “Everything’s Going to Be Great” still entertains in its grounded, almost laidback way. Cranston and Janney are so casually great that their attitude extends to the rest of the film, making it an incredibly easy watch even when Rogers’s screenplay and the bland direction from Jon S. Baird leave something to be desired. There’s not much visual flair on display, but the characters are fun to watch, and the performances are entertaining. That may not exactly make the film great, but it’s a good time in a theater nonetheless.
