Everything's Going to Be Great (2025) review

Theatre producer Buddy Smart (Bryan Cranston) drags his wife Macy (Allison Janney) and their teenage sons Derrick (Jack Champion) and Lester (Benjamin Evan Ainsworth) all over the United States for their business, but Macy becomes disillusioned with the fact that they're always struggling with their finances, and Derrick wants to stay put in Akron so he can play football and make out with girls.  There are a couple of nice light moments in the first half - Lester's regularly visited by the ghosts of stage legends Sir Noël Coward (Mark Caven), Ruth Gordon (Chick Reid), Tallulah Bankhead (Laura Benanti), etc. - although it loses any charm it might have had in the second half when Les catches his mom in flagrante delicto with another actor (Simon Rex) and then a major character drops dead in a grocery store.  From there the tone turns dour and lifeless, as they have to move to Kansas to live with Macy's brother Walter (Chris Cooper), she starts drinking heavily, the boys "fight" and it fumbles around with the "spiritual" side of life, with Macy worrying that Buddy never found "religion."  What's so wrong with being a dreamer, anyway?