Will Ferrell in 'Everything Must Go'

Dan Rush, the writer-director of "Everything Must Go," surely knew that adapting Raymond Carver's short story "Why Don't You Dance?" into a feature film would be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, Carver's narratives tend to be middles, without beginnings or sometimes even endings -- all the better to create your own. Then again, the impact of a short story, especially one so spare and enigmatic, often lies in what it omits.

The film and the story share the central conceit of a man -- now named Nick Halsey and played by Will Ferrell -- who arranges his belongings on his lawn and lives among them in a beer-soaked stupor. Other ideas have been added or embellished: Nick's wife, like him a recovering alcoholic (though we never see her), is the one who ejected all the stuff. Nick also just lost his job at some kind of large corporation.

Rush also invents a kindly new neighbor, Samantha (Rebecca Hall), an old schoolmate (Laura Dern) and a junior high schooler named Kenny (Christopher Jordan Wallace, son of the rapper Notorious B.I.G.). Kenny is the kind of character who frequently shows up in movies to teach middle-class white men the meaning of life; he helps Nick hold a purifying yard sale.

Ferrell displays about as much depth as his character calls for, which isn't much, but that's not the main problem with "Everything Must Go." Carver's mysterious, nearly empty story now feels overstuffed with disappointingly conventional details. The film's title seems almost ironic.