Steve Carell Suggests Brushing Off Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Days With Laughter

Disney’s Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day came out on October 10.

Starring Steve Carell and Jennifer Garner, the movie is about a young boy, Alexander, having the worst day of his young life. While he’s wondering if he’s the only person in the world who gets bad luck, the rest of his family is experiencing their own terrible days.

Steve Carell played Alexander’s father, Ben Cooper, and has had a lot to say about it.

Carell is a husband and father of two children. Referencing his own family, Steve Carell indicated that every parent could relate to at least parts of the film.

“We’ve never had a day exactly like this one, but we’ve had bits and pieces over the years that would add up to a day like this. If you’re a parent, you’ve had a day where your son or daughter doesn’t have a diaper on and they decide to pee and you have to deal with that; diaper bags breaking open and diapers going everywhere; not being able to find things; stuff falling out of the fridge when you don’t have any time to clean it up.”

What’s a person to do when they have bad days like that, though?

Well, Steve Carell had a suggestion for that, and that suggestion goes along with the lesson to be found in the Disney comedy.

“You have to be able to laugh at yourself. Bad stuff’s going to happen. It happens for everybody, you can’t avoid it. I do like the lesson that you have to sort of go along with it and accept it. Alexander, at one point, says: ‘You have to have bad days to appreciate the good ones’. And I think there’s truth in that. It’s all relative and bad days sort of give context to the good.”

Of course, very few people would expect comedic actor Steve Carell to do anything but laugh at himself when he is faced with a very bad day. Although he’s had a few serious roles, it’s easier to picture Carell with a smile on his face and amusement in his eyes.

In fact, Steve Carell seemed to have only one issue with the movie. It was based on a scene he had to film with a kangaroo.

“Kangaroos are freaky animals,” Carell stated. “Very cute, but I never got a sense of what that kangaroo was going to do, or where that kangaroo’s mind was at. But all the animals worked out well. We didn’t lose any of the kids, so it was good.”

[Image courtesy of ABCNews]