Print edition: 
Will Ferrell has become a star playing in silly comedies — as a naive elf, childish stepbrother, streaking past-his-prime frat rat or grotesquely flamboyant ice skater, among other roles.
They’ve all played to his comedic strengths, and rightfully so. He’s a funny, outlandish guy.
But as Ferrell showed in “Stranger Than Fiction,” he has surprising range — the guy can be serious and actually act.
His subdued performance beautifully drives the quietly quirky “Everything Must Go,” which opens in Wichita today after opening in larger markets a couple of weeks ago.
The film is based on a short story by Raymond Carver, with Ferrell playing Nick Halsey, a career salesman whose hot-shot status is dimming.
He’s also a recovering alcoholic. As we meet Nick, he’s being fired from his job for drunken behavior on a business trip.
So, after a quick stop to pick up some beer, he arrives home only to find that his belongings have been strewn across the front lawn.
He also discovers that the house is locked, and he finds a note from his wife telling him that she has left him for good.
So he sulks in his recliner on the front lawn and eventually passes out.
The next morning, he discovers that he’s also broke, as his wife has closed all of their joint accounts.
And Nick’s pesky neighbors have called the police on him.
But Nick’s Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor is also a detective, and he buys Nick five days’ time to get his life in order by getting him a license to have a yard sale. After that, Nick has to get everything off the lawn and move on or go to jail.
What comes next is Nick’s coming-of-sober-age tale by way of self-pity, self-loathing and much alcohol. But we can’t take our eyes off the train wreck.
Along the way, he befriends a neighborhood boy (Christopher Jordan Wallace, son of the late rapper Notorious B.I.G.) who becomes his sales protege, and a lonely, pregnant new neighbor across the street (effortlessly charming Rebecca Hall). He also looks up an old schoolmate (a still-radiant Laura Dern), who told him once that he was a diamond in the rough.
If this all sounds bleak, it’s not. It’s laced with humor (though it certainly isn’t the laughfest some trailers would suggest, either). What follows is Nick’s redemption, and the film becomes a hopeful character study.
The yard sale is, of course, a metaphor — Nick needs to shed his past life and start anew.
Thanks to Ferrell’s poignant performance, we root for him to do so, in a simple but enjoyable and meaningful tale.
