SIFF Review: Every Day is All About Being "Nice"

Richard Levine had a good producer/writer job on the lurid, sexy, druggy, semi-fact-based show Nip/Tuck, a difficult father-in-law, and a son who came out at age 14. So his first movie is semi-fact-based.

Liv Schreiber stars as a writer on the lurid, sexy, druggy staff of a TV show called Mercy Medical, whose son Ezra Miller comes out at 14, and whose marriage to Helen Hunt is strained when her dying, incontinent, irritable dad Brian Dennehy moves in with them and she has to quit work.

Every Day is a lot more warmhearted than Nip/Tuck, a key to its charm. Schreiber radiates nice-guyness, despite the fact that when he’s forced to work late with his pleasure-glutton writing partner Carla Gugino (Vince’s agent on Entourage), he’s actually swilling bubbly as she snorts coke prior to boinking him in her black-bottomed pool. For her, sex is just another deal (and did you know Gugino owes her career to her aunt, Let’s Make a Deal star Carol Merrill?).

Read the full review after the jump.

Helen Hunt, with her achingly arching eyebrows of sympathetic woe, out-nices Schreiber. But even she gets persnickety cleaning up after her dad’s jazz-fueled drinking binges. And he’s not nice at all. The gay son has the family niceness gene, too, and we fret for his virtue as an older gay guy stalks him at the dance. Eddie Izzard is fine as Schreiber’s crass but not quite immoral boss, with a pottymouth he’d better not kiss his mother with.

Everybody is so technically good, and so earnest, that you stick with the story. It’s kind of amazing Levine fielded such a distinguished cast for a movie shot in 23 days for a salary of all the Top Ramen they could eat. Also that a Hollywood guy would cook up something so not-high-concept and sincere. But I also see why it hasn’t been picked up for distribution. Its offhand, everyday quality is authentic and engaging, but it’s also rather quotidian – drab. The tale is both overstuffed with subplots and over-simple. Still, it’s a sweet little movie that leaves you with a warm glow.

Every Day Showtimes

May 27, 7pm (Harvard Exit)
May 29, 11am (Neptune Theatre)
June 11, 7pm (Kirkland Performance Center)