Review Roundup: EVERYTHING'S GOING TO BE GREAT Premieres at Tribeca Festival

This past week, the new theater dramedy Everything's Going to Be Great made its world premiere at Tribeca Festival. Starring Broadway alums Bryan Cranston and Allison Janney, the movie follows Buddy (Cranston) and Macy Smart (Janney) as they lead their unpredictable life in regional theater, while also trying to raise their radically different sons, Lester and Derrick.

Through it all, Buddy pursues his unstoppable dreams, and Macy is left to pull it all together and keep the family afloat. As the family grapples with identity and belonging, they share a humorous and heartfelt journey of self-discovery, learning the power of owning your spotlight, no matter what stage of life you’re in. 

In addition to Cranston and Janney, the movie stars Chris Cooper, Benjamin Evan Ainsworth, Jack Champion, Simon Rex, Jessica Clement, Mark Caven, Chick Reid, and Tony Award winners Laura Benanti and Cady Huffman. Find out what critics thought of the film below!

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Josh Sharpe, BroadwayWorld: "Part road movie, part family drama, part coming-of-age story, "Everything’s Going to Be Great" attempts to do many things at once. Some work, such as the lovely relationship between Les and his father. But most do not, resulting in a fragmented, inconsistent result that is less than the sum of its parts."

Owen Gleiberman, Variety: "Yet “Everything’s Going to Be Great” lacks the slick proficiency and comic precision of “Little Miss Sunshine,” a film it was clearly influenced by. The movie was directed by Jon S. Baird (“Tetris”), from a script by Steven Rogers, who wrote “I, Tonya” (which I loved), but he also wrote (or co-wrote) a handful of cheesy bad movies from the ’90s and 2000s (like “Stepmom” and “Hope Floats” and “Kate & Leopold” and “P.S. I Love You”), and this is a film by that Steven Rogers. The movie is slipshod; it’s full of half-baked arcs and ideas that don’t fully hang together."

Jesse Hassenger, Paste: "It has moments where these four characters support and snipe at each other in equal measure, moments where it feels like maybe screenwriter Steven Rogers is drawing upon something real and lived-in. And it runs all of that over with a restless, lurching lack of purpose that keeps hurtling the characters forward, into new-yet-familiar situations and meeting additional supporting characters, for most of its 95 minutes. The movie starts out a little cutesy, and, in its near-disastrous second half, leaves you wistfully recalling its initial cutesiness."

Brianna Zigler, AV Club: "Everything’s Going To Be Great tries to tackle ideas related to perceptions of success, acceptance, family, religion, love, homosexuality, and probably some other things thrown in there too. But there is no commitment to any of them. Instead, the film concludes on simplistic, nebulous notes of “It’s ok to be yourself” and “Family is important."

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Everything's Going to Be Great will be available in select theaters on Friday, June 20. Check out the trailer below.

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