Everything's Going to Be Great, 2025 - ★★★

thunt’s review published on Letterboxd: The next movie I watched on the airplane was everything is going to be all right, which claimed that it was a comedy, but then it was a dramedy and much more of a drama. Bryan Cranston and Alison Janney from the West Wing star as theater parents who want their kids to be in shows and run a theater and go from town to town putting on shows. The older kid doesn't want to be shows he'd rather do football. The younger kid is in love with the theater. And in what could have, and I hoped would be more interesting, is talking to a number of dead playwrights and dead theater actors and things like that, famous people like Noel Coward. It's done nicely, but it just doesn't seem to add much. As spoiler alert, the movie gets incredibly and heartbreakingly sad when Bryan Cranston, the theater guy full of energy who leads the family, passes away halfway through the movie. It's made the worst because Alice and Jenny was having an affair with some random dude and discovered by the kid at about the same time that the father dies, really punching you in the face with the drama. I would have much rather watched a movie about two theater parents who raised their kids in the theater, who love the theater, who meet girls and friends and family and maybe become like friends with a new town, like they're outsiders and they're coming to the new town, and it's all about that. Instead, it was more about this very sad kid and how he has no friends at school, and his brother is a big jerk to him, and then his brother becomes more and more of a jerk, although it is funny because he would have had a football career had they stayed in their first town in the middle of nowhere, but as soon as he moves to the larger city, people are much better at football than the drama kid, reminiscent of Matthew Perry's autobiography, which I'm reading recently. He was a Canadian tennis star who learned quickly when he came to Los Angeles, where tennis is played 365 days a year, outside by people who own their own courts. He was not a Los Angeles tennis star, the theater kid. Seems like he'll go far. Does end with a slightly more positive note, as Alison Janney returns the family to working in the theater and putting on shows, and it's as if the father's legacy is living on. However, I don't know why they had to make the movie so sad. Maybe it was based on someone's real life, and they're getting back at us, maybe two of five stars, maybe three. But still, even for airline viewing, just a rough, meandering, slow, sad picture you. Transcribed by otter.ai