7/10
You need to put up some curtains......
15 November 2011
Warning: Spoilers
On the day he's fired from his job in Phoenix, for falling off the wagon and waking up in the hotel room of an associate who files a suit for harassment, Nicholas Halsey comes home to find his stuff on the front lawn, the locks changed, and a farewell note from his wife.

With his bank account frozen, his credit cards and phone cancelled, and his company car gone, he takes up residence on the lawn.

A cop who's his AA sponsor tells him he can sit there for five days as if it's a garage sale, then he'll face arrest.

With help from a chubby kid on a bicycle, a pregnant neighbour, and an old high school acquaintance, Nick goes on a beer-soaked odyssey, from his front-yard easy chair...

Not since stranger than fiction, has Ferrell been this brilliant. This proves that the man can act, without acting stupid, but one does hope he doesn't go all Jim Carrey, because I like the other Will, I really do.

His character is really hard to root for though, as he has all this coming to him, and no matter what he does in the film, it still nags in the ack of his head 'you really have no one else to blame'.

The film doesn't really focus on alcoholism, but the connotations are rife throughout. He drinks through the majority of the film, and plotwise, drinking has destroyed him, but the narrative doesn't really focus on that, it focuses on him and his thoughts.

It's beautifully made though, one of those lovely films that comes around once in a while from out of nowhere and really grabs you.

the performances are first rate and the locations beautiful.

But just as you think that things are going his way a little, they just get worse, and he hits another wall. This man gets no reprieve throughout the film, and at times it does make you feel a little down, but makes you thankful for what you have got.

An easy film to watch, with a lovely message.
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