Jerry Mills & Will Ferrell

My Rotarian brother Bob put me on to this video by one of his fellow Rotarians, and it expresses a nice sentiment, one we could all well follow. If you want to see it full screen, just right click on the video and go to "enter full screen."

Come Join Us-EN from Rotary International on Vimeo.

We went to see Everything Must Go with Will Ferrell and neither of us is quite sure what to make of it. Our Arizona Republic reviewer gave it four-and-a-half stars. I’m not sure how many I’d give it. I’d call it a movie in slow motion, about a man’s life disintegrating and then sort of reintegrating in the second half. Ferrell is a salesman, and a good one, but is also an alcoholic who brings about his own downfall—fired from the firm where he’s worked for sixteen years, kicked out and locked out of his house and home, coming home to find all his “stuff” out on the front lawn, having his company car taken by a reclamation firm along with all his belongings in the car, discovering shortly thereafter that he no longer has access to his bank accounts or any of the money therein. Nearly the entire movie is taken up with his living out on his front lawn among his stuff, drinking beer after beer after beer, offending his neighbors. I’ve never understood how some people can do that with beer. I mean, where do they put it? How often must they have to urinate? Somewhere between beers he meets a young black boy named Kenny who signs up to help him sell some of the items on the lawn. Their deal is $7.25 an hour and some baseball lessons from Ferrell. He also meets a young pregnant woman who has just moved into the house across the street. She is there waiting for her husband to join her. They form a tentative friendship in which she helps him come down from his beer dependence after he runs out of money and beer. At first, he doesn’t want to sell the things he’s accumulated in what must have been a rather shallow, childless marriage, but with Kenny’s help, he lets everything go for only pennies on the dollar. His wife finally relents and sends him keys to the house and some money to help him on his way. End of movie, the audience left to assume that he’ll get his life back . . . sort of. The slapstick Will Ferrell does an admirable non-funny, straight dramatic job of portraying this strange loser man. I guess I’d give it four stars now that I’ve thought about it.