EVERYTHING’S GOING TO BE GREAT

EVERYTHING’S GOING TO BE GREAT is a comedy set in the late 1980s about a married couple with two teenage boys who work in community theater, where the father’s dreams of success keep hitting snags and the two boys have totally different attitudes about the theater. EVERYTHING’S GOING TO BE GREAT has lots of humor mixed with some tragedy, bolstered by moving references to Christian faith and family, but it’s marred by Romantic elements featuring strong foul language, misguided politically correct content promoting woke “tolerance,” and gratuitous lewd and crude content.

The movie stars Bryan Cranston as Buddy Smart, a community theater director with big dreams that never seem to come true. He keeps plugging along, however, with strong support from his wife, Macy, played by Allison Janney. There’s only one major bone of contention between them. Macy is a committed Catholic who keeps trying to convince her atheist husband to believe in God too. However, Buddy stubbornly refuses.

One of their teenage boys, Les, is a middle school student who longs to see his name up in lights. He’s following in his father’s footsteps, but he’s so addicted to the theater that he likes to barge in on the players on stage to perform with them. Les has such a theatrical personality that everyone thinks he’s homosexual (the movie never really answers the question about whether he is or is not, but there are strong indications he is).

The other teenage boy, Derrick, is a junior in high school. He’s totally into football and hates the theater, or pretends to hate it. Derrick also doesn’t like moving around from town to town when the family’s current community theater group stops bringing in an audience, or a new opportunity arrives. Whenever the family has to move to another town, the father tells the family, “Everything’s going to be great!”

One day, Buddy gets an offer to run a community theater in New Jersey. Even better, if the theater does well, Buddy and his family can have a permanent job running a community theater in Milwaukee. Buddy is excited about the new opportunity, and so is Les. However, Derrick is upset having to leave his girlfriend and the football program in Akron, Ohio.

In New Jersey, Les has moved up a grade to be a freshman in high school. However, he doesn’t fit in at all there, but Derrick easily makes the transition to the new school. In fact, he’s a hit with several of the girls in his class. Both boys become acquaintances with a girl named Selena. Selena wants to leave high school to become a singer in Los Angeles. She also has a bad reputation as the school’s “loose” girl who dates many guys.

Sadly, the differences between the two brothers about their father’s choice of careers comes to a boil. Their fight leads to physical blows in the school cafeteria, in front of everyone.

Meanwhile, Buddy comes up with a scheme to make sure the community theater in New Jersey is a success. Despite his atheism, he joins all the major Christian churches in town, plus the local Jewish synagogue, to sell tickets to all the congregations.

Things come to a head when the very day Buddy gets some really good news about the theater is also the same day a great tragedy hits the family, and the same day Les is gob smacked by a devastating revelation about a family secret.

Can Les and the family recover?

EVEYRTHING’S GOING TO BE GREAT is a bit theatrical, but it’s often funny and moving, plus generally well-acted, though sometimes over-the-top. The production’s theatrical nature is understandable, however, because the story is about a theatrical family with two theatrical hams, Les and his father, Buddy. In fact, there are comical scenes where Les imagines himself talking to famous theater people of yesteryear, Noel Coward, Ruth Gordon, Tallulah Bankhead, and playwright Thomas Inge.

The movie also has some positive Chistian references to God, Jesus, faith, and church. In fact, perhaps the most moving scene in the whole movie is when the slutty high school girl, Selena, sings the Christmas carol “Oh, Holy Night” in church. Les is moved by her beautiful performance, and his mother starts crying. “O, Holy Night” is one of the most beautiful, underrated of Christmas hymns

Sadly, the movie’s Christian references and moving family scenes are marred by strong Non-Christian, Romantic content. For example, at a conference with the middle school principal in the first scene, the father takes a crude politically correct stance on homosexuality. He preaches a virtue signaling attitude of “tolerance” to the principal. EVERYTHING’S GOING TO BE GREAT is also marred by strong foul language and some gratuitously lewd and crude content. For example, it has a briefly depicted fornication scene between an adult man and woman, with the man showing rear nudity. The scene is a major plot twist that affects two major characters. The movie also has implied sexual references between the teenagers in the New Jersey high school, plus a scene where one teenage girl lets a teenage boy feel under her shirt.

So, despite the moving Christian and family bonding scenes in EVERYTHING’S GOING TO BE GREAT, the movie is too excessive and unacceptable. It has too much gratuitous immoral content.