Film Review: Every Day

Vegas Outsider review of the new dramedy "Every Day", starring Liev Schreiber, Helen Hunt, Carla Gugino, Eddie Izzard, and Brian Dennehy

Drawing upon his own life as a staff writer for Nip/Tuck, writer/director Richard Levine has crafted a sometimes sugary but refreshingly honest portrait of marriage and family life in the new dramedy, Every Day. Boasting a solid cast including Liev Schreiber as Levine’s on-screen surrogate, Helen Hunt, Carla Gugino, Eddie Izzard, and Brian Dennehy, the film investigates a few days in the life of Ned (Schreiber) and his family.

On the outside, Ned would appear to have a seemingly perfect life; a beautiful wife (Hunt), successful job as a television staff writer, two great kids, and a wonderful home in the New York suburbs. As the story begins, Ned is stuck juggling between taking care of his boys while his wife Jeannie is away and trying to finish an appropriately salacious script for Mercy Medical, the show he is current on staff for under Garrett (Izzard) the overzealous, demanding showrunner for whom, there is never enough shock.

We soon learn Jeannie is returning to their home with Ernie (Dennehy), her sick, cold father whose depression and negative attitude seeks to crush everyone’s spirit. On top of that, Ned is left negotiating with his elder son Jonah (Ezra Miller) over everything including the gay and lesbian ball Jonah wishes to attend. Unsure of his own feelings about Jonah’s coming out and whether it’s for real or not, Ned constantly seeks to reign in his son not out of any malicious homophobia but rather fearing for the 15 year-old’s safety amongst older men. In this light, Levine essentially takes a familiar storyline in the father fearing for his daughter’s virginity and flipped it to reflect a different but equally viable perspective.

For his part, Jonah means well and thankfully is not subjected to any overplayed existential angst over what it means to be gay or anything of the sort; he’s simply a young kid whose hormones have begun to kick in and he is carefully acting out on them. The story though throws another log onto the fire upon Ernie’s introduction; a once proud man beset by constant sickness and grief over his son’s death, Ernie is a man that is prepared to die and honestly is annoyed that his daughter interrupted him. Ernie’s constant demanding and mean-spiritedness undermines Jeannie’s goodwill as she struggles against her own resentment towards him; Hunt’s constant frustration over his care while holding her family together is perfectly communicated by her outward weariness and tired eyes.

Ned has his own cross to bear unfortunately with Garrett, who remains unimpressed with his staff writer’s progress and inability to deliver on the wild sexual debauchery that he craves in his storylines. He therefore assigns his right hand Robin (Gugino) to punch up Ned’s writing, which she happily agrees to. Ned, needing a reprieve from Garrett and family, is steadily seduced by Robin’s carefree, single lifestyle as she makes her own romantic interest in him loud and clear. Eventually, all the extraneous plot threads from Ernie and Jeannie’s estrangement, Jonah’s adolescent exploration, to Ned’s slight crisis of confidence converge together with sometimes hilarious and sometimes tragic result.

All in all, what is refreshing about Every Day is its very lack of sensationalism and lazy melodrama; Ned and Jeannie are a typical married couple with kids – tired, always too much to do, stressing over money, and juggling commitments to others with their own desires. For their part, Hunt and Schreiber have enough screen chemistry to play up the small moments of humor that bind them as a couple along with concerns and flashes of anger. Ned and Jeannie are not worried about their marriage crumbling as so many film couples do, they’re simply trying to raise their kids and live their lives. That point alone could be what both enlivens and cripples the film, the lack of obvious struggle sometimes causes the plot to meander amongst the various threads.

Thankfully enough plates are left spinning so as to hold one’s attention but in all actuality there are at least two films worth of material to work with here. Special notice belongs to Izzard, whose portrait of a zealous, sensation-seeking showrunner is apparently based on Glee and Nip/Tuck’s showrunner Ryan Murphy. Whether or not the real Murphy is as idiosyncratic as Izzard plays him is up for debate but thankfully the British performer is smart enough to infuse Garrett with enough pathos to make him somewhat likable if always a bit much to swallow. Overall, Every Day is a succinct portrait of a relatively normal, everyday family and its problems. While all of us cannot relate to the troubles of television writing and the income it provides, we all have relatives that grate our nerves, kids that test our limits, and significant others we sometimes take for granted while still loving them.

To learn more about this film, go to www.image-entertainment.com