Everything's Going to Be Great: Well ... not quite

Everything's Going to Be Great (2025) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated R, for partial nudity, sexual candor and frequent profanity

Available via: Amazon Prime and other video-on-demand options

By Derrick Bang

Folks passionate about All Things Theater — amateur or professional — are guaranteed to adore this modest Canadian dramedy.

 

Everybody else ... likely not. 

 

After a particularly trying day at school, Les (Benjamin Evan Ainsworth) receives some
encouraging — if typically quite unusual — advice from his father, Buddy (Brian Cranston).

Director Jon S. Baird’s flamboyant touch approaches burlesque at times, and mainstream folks may find star Bryan Cranston’s character totally annoying. It’s also hard to forgive the unexpected midpoint hiccup in Steven Rogers’ script, after which the film loses considerable steam, never to be regained.

The year is 1989, the initial setting Akron, Ohio. Carefree Buddy Smart (Cranston) has led his family through a series of temporary theater management jobs ever since marrying his wife, Macy (Allison Janney), two decades ago. Everybody pitches in, whether serving as stage manager, prop handler, ticket seller or accepting roles in the current production.

 

Trouble is, they’ve never been successful enough to remain in one place for long, after which it’s on to the next small-town theater seeking new management.

 

The indefatigable Buddy is a relentless cheerleader nonetheless, insisting that this time will be different; they’ll finally make it; and so forth. Every time the clearly overwhelmed Macy points to the grim result from their failure to put enough warm bodies in theater seats, Buddy brushes her off by insisting, “Everything’s going to be great.”

 

In a word, he’s exhausting ... but Cranston, so adept at body movement and well-timed dialogue, makes him endearingly exhausting. Most of the time.

 

Younger son Les (Benjamin Evan Ainsworth), who worships his father, is fully on board; he’s a pretentious kid given to exaggerated outfits, with a tendency to quote lines from plays. During moments of confusion or crisis, he receives advice from dead thespians and playwrights such as Noël Coward, Ruth Gordon, Tallulah Bankhead and William Inge (each amusingly played by, respectively, Mark Caven, Chick Reid, Laura Benanti and David MacLean).

 

To say that Les stands out from his classmates is the worst of understatements; he may as well have the word “nerd” tattooed on his forehead.

 

“They don’t get me,” he glumly says to his father, at one point. No kidding.

Pinocchio: Could use a few more strings

Pinocchio (2022) • View trailer

Three stars (out of five). Rated PG, for dramatic intensity and mild rude humor

Available via: Disney+

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.9.22

Filmmakers are reading each other’s mail again.

 

The memory of Italian director Matteo Garrone’s live-action 2019 version of Pinocchio remains fresh — in part because it didn’t reach our shores until spring 2021 — and now we have Disney’s sorta-kinda live-action reboot of its 1940 animated classic.

 

Geppetto (Tom Hanks) has no idea that the wooden puppet, which he so lovingly
crafted, is about to be brought to life by a magical blue fairy.

And, come December 9, it’ll be joined by director Guillermo del Toro’s handling of the same story, which is guaranteed to be much darker and scarier (and, therefore, much closer to the spirit of Carlo Collodi’s 1883 novel).

But back to the present…

 

Of late, the current Disney regime has been hell-bent on putting a live-action spin on all of Uncle Walt’s animated classics, along with many of the studio’s more recent hits. The results have been mixed, to say the least; for every successful Alice in Wonderland (2010) and Jungle Book (2016), we’ve suffered through misfires such as the bloated Beauty and the Beast (2017), the excessively distressing Dumbo (2019) and the blink-and-you-missed it — trust me, not a bad thing — Lady and the Tramp, a streaming debut that same year.

 

The obvious question arises: Why bother?

 

Inclusion and political correctness can be a factor, and — in theory — there’s nothing wrong with reviving a beloved chestnut. After all, how many local theater productions of (as just a couple of examples) The Music Man and My Fair Lady get mounted every year, to the delight of packed audiences?

 

Uncle Walt’s Pinocchio is eight decades old, which certainly seems far enough back to justify a fresh take. And, in fairness, director Robert Zemeckis’ new film has much to offer: Doug Chiang and Stefan Dechant’s sumptuously colorful production design is amazing — gotta love all the cuckoo clocks in Geppetto’s workshop — and Don Burgess’ equally lush cinematography gives the saga a lovely fairy tale glow.

 

But the film fails on the most crucial level. Despite the CGI trickery with which this version’s title character is brought to life, and even despite young Benjamin Evan Ainsworth’s earnest voice performance, this Pinocchio doesn’t have anywhere near the warmth, vulnerability, poignant curiosity, chastened regret or beingness of his hand-drawn predecessor.

 

In short, 1940’s Pinocchio felt like a real boy, even while still a marionette. This CGI Pinocchio is a cartoon character.

 

And everything crumbles from that misstep.

 

Tom Hanks’ Geppetto is an exercise in mumbled absent-mindedness, as if he’s constantly on the verge of forgetting his lines, or where to stand. He’s also much too calm when initially confronted with the miracle of his wooden puppet come to life, as if this is somehow a routine occurrence. 

 

Indeed, Pinocchio’s very existence similarly is taken for granted by all the villagers and schoolchildren; the schoolmaster banishes Pinocchio from the classroom because he’s “just a puppet,” but seems unfazed by the fact that he is a puppet brought to life.

Flora & Ulysses: Doesn't quite fly

Flore & Ulysses (2021) • View trailer

Three stars. Rated PG, for no particular reason

By Derrick Bang

Although director Lena Khan’s adaptation of Kate DiCamillo’s Newbery Award-winning children’s novel occasionally retains its message and engagingly snarky tone, the film — available via Disney+ — too frequently succumbs to the property-destroying slapstick that characterized far too many insufferable Disney comedies in the late 1960s and ’70s.

 

Having discovered that her new pet squirrel has some rather unusual talents, Flora
(Matilda Lawler) is faced with a problem: What does one do with a critter that can fly,
and possesses super-strength?

I suspect the book’s fans will not be pleased.

 

Brad Copeland’s screenplay takes serious liberties with DiCamillo’s book, particularly with respect to how the young heroine’s mother is portrayed. She has been softened considerably here, and made more amiably flustered and vulnerable: characteristics at which co-star Alyson Hannigan is quite adept.

 

This, in turn, demands an entirely re-written third act dominated by a new comic-relief villain: a juvenile artistic decision which suggests that Khan and Copeland simply didn’t understand their source material. More’s the pity.

 

We meet young Flora Belle Buckman (Matilda Lawler) at low ebb: deeply concerned because her parents — George (Ben Schwartz) and Phyllis (Hannigan) — have separated. He’s a frustrated comic book artist depressed by never having been able to sell any of his creations; she’s a successful romance novelist who fails to realize that her current case of writer’s block stems from the absence of her soul mate.

 

Flora, adept at adapting, has forsaken hope for suspicion and pragmatic sarcasm: She’s a self-proclaimed cynic, and proud of it. Her imagination is shaped by the do-gooding heroes she adores in comic books, while recognizing that there are no heroes — no magic, no miracles — in the real world. Her personal philosophy is shaped by the book Terrible Things Can Happen to You!

 

(Let it be said, her small town has the world’s coolest comic book shop.)

 

On an otherwise ordinary day, a somewhat ditzy neighbor’s Ulysses Super-Suction, Multi-Terrain 2000X vacuum cleaner bursts from the house, into the yard and — to Flora’s horror — sucks up an unsuspecting squirrel. Not one to shirk from an opportunity for personal heroism, Flora rescues the little critter, reviving it from suffocation by … well, the way one normally helps those who aren’t breathing.

 

The grateful squirrel refuses to leave Flora’s side, becoming a clandestine pet … and not just any pet. As the next few days pass, Ulysses — as Flora has named him — demonstrates impressive strength, along with the ability of actual flight. Even more amazing, he clearly understands what Flora says, and can “respond” with brief sentences composed while bouncing on the keys of Phyllis’ ancient manual typewriter.

 

“Holy Bagumba!” the girl exclaims.