Everyday People (2005)

Everyday People is writer/director Jim McKay's disappointingly pedantic follow-up to the beautifully restrained and naturalistic drama Our Song. Everyday People is essentially a John Sayles-esque movie about gentrification, albeit without the requisite sociopath and with Sayles' seeming indifference to composition replaced by McKay's fairly strong, evocative visuals, courtesy of accomplished cinematographer Russell Fine, who shot McKay's first film, Girls Town. While generally well received, Girls Town was criticized for the overdetermined didacticism that McKay successfully avoided with his superb second feature, Our Song. Although ambitious in dealing with a great number of characters of widely varying ages, ethnicities, socioeconomic backgrounds, and, ostensibly, political views, Everyday People is a disappointing step backwards for the filmmaker. The film does get at the complexity of the issues involved in the closing of a Brooklyn neighborhood restaurant, and there are a couple of interactions between the characters that ring true (including the particularly touching and true-to-life stab at romance between struggling single-mother Joleen [Bridget Barkan] and college-bound Samel [Billöah Greene]). While it's impossible to deny McKay's good intentions, the filmmaker seems more interested in making his political points and subverting stereotypes than in presenting his characters as fully fleshed-out human beings or in telling a believable story. ~ Josh Ralske, All Movie Guide