Ned’s got a very complicated, unhappy life. His wife is taking care of his father-in-law, who has now joined their household. He is struggling to find an answer to accepting his son’s newfound ‘gay’ life. On top of that, he is doing terrible at work with writing an episode to a soft-core porn show. Oh yeah, he’s having a completely unfulfilled marriage as well. Things are bad for Ned, and crew, but the could be worse and Ned shows us how.
Every Day is a very difficult film to write about simply because much like the main character it’s truly confusing and all over the place. Most stories similar to this one have some sort of groundwork that has been laid down already; there’s no confusion on what is the ultimate goal. In Every Day it’s tough as a viewer to grasp what the story is trying to ‘get to’. Is Ned wanting to leave his family? Is Ned going to cheat on his wife? Is Ned going to quit? Terrible thought, but valid question, is Ned going to kill himself? The movie just invites the viewer into its world and says, ‘Good luck! Try to follow’ and never gives any clear direction on where it’s going and how it’s going to end up. You’re simply taken through a series of plot points that rarely have any connection with each other, sans the infidelity portion of the film and Ned’s unhappiness with his wife. Every Day has ‘uh-oh’ moments in it, but those moments truly never get properly resolved. For example, (SPOILER ALERT) Ned sleeps with his co-worker Robin (and are interrupted violently by Robin’s ex-boyfriend). Once this happens, and Ned gets home, there isn’t a punishment for his character. There isn’t a single repercussion to him; it’s simply a fart in the wind. Ned’s wife, Jeannie, probably knows it and actually gives some slight indication of knowing, but ultimately there isn’t a resolution for it. (SPOILER END)
That’s how the entire movie works out.
This isn’t to say that there aren’t moments of entertainment, like Eddie Izzard’s distasteful executive producer Garrett, who says all sorts of horrible things, but for the overall story of the film it simply doesn’t work as a whole.
On top of this, the cast seems to be missing some pieces. Helen Hunt’s Jeannie is way too worn down than she needed to be. Every time Jeannie hit the screen I thought about how terrible she looked and tried to make sense of it. I understand that she was slowly killing herself taking care of her father (played by Brian Dennehy), but she looked as if someone had shot her best friend every time she was on camera. I understood why Ned did what he did later in the film because if that was my wife the marriage would have been over a long time ago. Her sad face never truly recovered in the story, even at the end.
Anyway, the story is so disjointed and confusing that it was too difficult to enjoy Every Day. Had there been a smoother bridge with perfectly placed plot points then this might have turned out differently. I do understand that Ned’s life is supposed to be sporadic and disjointed, but not this much.
With that said, the Blu-ray portion of the film wasn’t too bad. I’ve certainly seen better 1080p on the format before, but I’ve definitely seen worse. The colors in the film were predominantly gray; plenty of dark shades. it didn’t hurt the film, but it didn’t make it seem like something beautiful. To the transfer’s credit it didn’t have many, if any, artifacts in the picture. The problem was that the film didn’t have many colors standing out either. It was good, but it wasn’t great. As for the audio, the pool scene probably was a great example of how DTS-HD 5.1 sounds. Sounds were coming out in the speakers where they needed to and everything sounded perfect.
Finally, as for the special features, you get a nice variety of cast interviews, some deleted scenes and a trailer. Nothing to crow loudly about, but definitely better than some recent releases from big name studios. They did help with the Blu-ray experience, but I would have died to hear some commentary on this one.