De Niro more than 'Fine' in family drama
To its credit, Kirk Jones' estranged family-in-crisis drama "Everybody's Fine" refuses to pull out the pliers to yank tears from our ducts. But it thinks about it - really hard.
"Everybody's Fine" is a remake of Giuseppe Tornatore's 1990 Italian film "Stanno tutti bene." Both serve up ample servings of old-fashioned sentiment, which Jones is more than willing to shamelessly pile on.
It's Robert De Niro's transparent performance as Frank Goode, a pudgy, middle-aged, retired father with a selective memory that keeps Jones' drama grounded and accessible.
As Frank travels around the country visiting his four grown children, he's forced to examine his parenting abilities. For one thing, he comes to realize he has raised a family of liars, and bad liars at that.
As "Everyone's Fine" opens, Frank anxiously prepares a dinner for his kids, who have agreed to return home for the first time since their mother died eight months earlier. Frank buys steaks, wines and a new $600 outdoor grill.
But as the dinner approaches, each of his children calls to cancel, citing personal problems and professional commitments. Frank says nothing, but we can tell he's crushed.
Faster than you can sing, "Cat's in the Cradle," Frank decides, against his doctor's orders, to risk his delicate health to take a trip by bus and train to make surprise visits to each of his kids, scattered around the country. He prepares four sealed envelopes to give them.
First up is son David, who has become a painter in New York City. David never answers his door. He never comes home, either. After spending the night on the steps, Frank slips an envelope under the door and takes off for Chicago to see Amy (Kate Beckinsale, armed with an American accent), a successful ad agency boss.
A clearly flustered Amy blurts out excuses for why Frank can't stay at her posh home with husband Jeff (Damien Young) and her teen son Jack (Lucian Maisel), who seems to have a hate/really-hate relationship with his own dad. What's up?
Frank moves on to son Robert (Sam Rockwell), an orchestra conductor in Denver. Only when Sam surprises Robert during rehearsals, the son is a percussionist. What's up?
He, too, must leave town that night, so Dad can't stay with him, either.
So, Frank packs up for Las Vegas to see daughter Rosie (Drew Barrymore), a professional dancer. She lives in a huge, expensive apartment.
Then Frank overhears a stranger's voice on an answering machine, saying that he needs the apartment back earlier than expected. What's up?
"Everybody's Fine" (the stock answer to the common question "How's the family?") is punctuated by sentimental devices. As Frank meets each son and daughter, he first sees them as little children before they morph into adults. (Steve Martin's "Father of the Bride" handled this more effectively.)
During a mild heart attack, the aging Frank hallucinates he's at a picnic table with his tiny kids, and they confirm the true circumstances that he already suspects. (The confrontational scene plays better than it sounds.)
Meanwhile, Hurricane Alice pounds the east coast with fury and force as a blunt metaphor for stormy relationships.
Regrettably, the filmmakers don't have enough confidence in "Everybody's Fine" to let it stand up as a sincere examination of a father's influence without the addition of a life-and-death subplot involving drugs.
It's still a watchable holiday movie, thanks mostly to De Niro's layered performance as a simple man suddenly gripped with a bad case of introspection.
Who would have guessed that the lean and mean Travis Bickle from "Taxi Driver" would grow up (and out) to be this soft and ordinary?
"Everybody's Fine"
Rating: ★ ★ ½
Starring: Robert De Niro, Drew Barrymore, Sam Rockwell, Kate Beckinsale
Directed by: Kirk Jones
Other: A Miramax Films release. Rated PG-13 for language. 95 minutes