EVERYTHING'S GOING TO BE GREAT - Mark Reviews Movies

Everything's Going to Be Great, Lionsgate

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Review by Mark Dujsik | June 19, 2025

The story of Everything's Going to Be Great is divided cleanly in half. On the first side of a central turning point, there's a comedy about an eccentric family whose members are very different. On the other side of that event, there's a more serious drama about that same family trying to get through tragedy and grief, only to keep hitting walls because of how different they are.

The problem with Steven Rogers' screenplay isn't that this dichotomy exists within the story. It's that it is tough to buy these characters as authentic in the first half, since the entirety of that part of the story is presented as an oddball comedy, so when those same characters are put into a genuinely difficult situation, the movie hasn't established them to work within that scenario. The whole setup leaves us wondering why Rogers and director Jon S. Baird would construct this narrative in a way that turns out to be so tonally jarring.

It's not as if the comedic bits in the front half are especially worthwhile, anyway. They revolve around the Smart family, a roving band of semi-misfits being led around by the dreams of patriarch Buddy (Bryan Cranston). He's a producer of little success on the regional theater scene.

He and his family are currently in Ohio trying to garner some attention at a local theater. Buddy's wife Macy (Allison Janney), who used to have ambitions to be on the stage, takes care of the financial side of the family business, while elder son Derrick (Jack Champion) is also outside of the creative element. He'd rather play football and begrudges the fact that his father sometimes forces him to perform (The teen does mouth along to the words of showtunes whenever the family is in the car, though).

The focal point, however, is younger son Lester (Benjamin Evan Ainsworth), called "Les" and who's the kind of precocious kid to have an entire conversation with his dad about how his name is basically a diminutive insult. Les is a lot to take here. Beyond the fact that Rogers has written him to be too clever for his own good and done so well enough that he can be grating (not Ainsworth's fault), Les is also an attention-hog, drawn to the stage in the middle of performances—even and especially when he's not actually part of the cast.

Oh, the kid also imagines himself having conversations with past playwrights, from Noël Coward to William Inge, and actors, from Ruth Gordon to Tallulah Bankhead. This is intended to be an amusing little quirk of the character, but at a certain point and in combination with everything else that's established about Les, we start wondering if the boy might benefit from some counseling.

Ignoring the broad characterizations and the blunt familial conflict, the basic concept of this early part of the story is somewhat charming. There's a scrappiness to this, as Buddy tries to promote his business and himself in order to continue the process of packing up shop and home to move on to the next prospective market. Everyone in the family, even the dubious Derrick, does what needs to be done, because the alternative is financial ruin for the clan and crushing disappointment for Buddy.

The man may have his issues, namely stubbornness and being too self-involved to really consider what his failure could mean to others, but no one wants to see that, simply because Buddy can also be infectiously optimistic and occasionally prove that he is determined to succeed. After the family moves on to New Jersey to start producing at a theater there, Buddy comes up with a scheme to join every house of worship in the area, guaranteeing that every congregation will be offered a discount on subscriptions. Macy, who is religious and wishes her husband would find faith, is initially angry, until she does the math for herself.

Without saying too much about that midway turning point, let's just say the movie loses a major component of the energy that keeps it somewhat on track. That absence is substantial, which is the point, of course, for a second half that has everyone dealing with a sudden, unexpected loss and turn of fortune. New conflicts emerge, as Les learns something about his mother about which he'd probably prefer to be ignorant and the brothers end up attending the same school, vying for the attention of the same girl, and having a falling out once their differences seem irreconcilable. Chris Cooper shows up, too, as Macy's estranged brother Walter, adding to both the gloomy air and the notion that everything can be solved with pat monologues of life lessons.

It's easy to comprehend what the filmmakers are attempting with Everything's Going to Be Great, because the setup is obvious and the movie basically tells us as much. In terms of tone and purpose, though, the two halves of this movie work against each other in a way that diminishes the potential and impact of both.

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