Movie Review: Everybody's Fine

By FOX43tv.com's Film Reviewer, Stephanie Cooke

Watch the trailer!

"Fine" is what you say when you don't want to get into how "not fine" you are. And that's exactly true of the family in Kirk Jones's new film "Everybody's Fine".

Robert DeNiro is Frank Goode, a recent widower whose view of his four children was shaped by the stories told to him about them by his recently deceased wife. He is a blue-collar man who, we learn, worked hard his entire life in a telephone wire factory and demanded a lot from his children. The mother communicated with the grown children and relayed to him that everybody was always fine. We, of course, know two things: this is a movie and everybody cannot be that fine.

Frank is now sick himself with an undisclosed lung illness related to his time in the factory and really wants to reconnect with his children. He invites them all to dinner and one by one they all cancel. So he decides to make a surprise visit to each of them at their homes across the country, to try and get them all home for Christmas. His doctor advises against flying and so he begins a journey by train and bus, automobile. His first stop is New York to see his very successful artist son David who, it appears is just not home. He does manage to see one of David's paintings hanging in a gallery window.

Then it's off to Chicago to see his very successful daughter Amy (Kate Beckinsale) who has her own advertising agency and his only grandchild. The career is successful but as for the marriage well, everybody's fine. After Chicago, it's off to Denver to see his very successful son Robert (Sam Rockwell) who is a conductor with the Symphony. He is not a conductor, he's a percussionist and he's fine with that. Not married, smoking, but happy and oh yes, fine.

The last stop is Las Vegas to see his very successful dancer daughter Rosie (Drew Barrymore). She picks him up in a limo and takes him back to a spectacular apartment and surprise babysitting adventure dropped off at the last minute by a neighbor. Frank overhears a voicemail saying somebody needs the apartment back and decides to fly home - against the orders of his doctor.

All along the trip, we see Frank struggle to complete his journey. He misses a train, he almost gets mugged and loses his medication, he's confused by the fact that everybody is just not fine. But he is also curious about what is happening with David. Throughout the movie, as Frank travels, he stares out of the windows at his handy work -- the telephone wires. As he does we hear bits and pieces of conversations happening over the wires -- mostly between the kids talking about Frank and David and the fact that they can't let their Dad know that David is in trouble.

Just as he figure out that everybody is not fine, he has his own medical crisis setting up the ending which is a bit predictable. I found DeNiro excellent in this role. He took the blue-collar guy and built him up into a character who was hard on his kids and regrets it, which we believe not because Frank says it, but because DeNiro plays it that way. Sure the DeNiro trademark nuances are there (the eyebrows, the smirk), but subtle and buried in the character. I believe him as this understated old guy being humbled by reality. As for the rest of the acting, Sam Rockwell is the standout among them. He has few scenes but makes the most of the ones he's in. And Drew Barrymore plays well the role of the daughter who has the most compassion for their father.

The movie is based on an original screenplay and 1990 film by Giuseppe Tornatore called “Stanno Tutti Bene” about an Italian man in the same situation. Kirk Jones (Waking Ned Divine) adapts the screenplay and directs. At times it hits you over the head with what's coming and can use a few too many premonitions -- especially one near the end. But, I enjoyed the senary and telephone lines rocking along Frank's journey. I also loved Jones's use of intercutting scenes. Each time Frank saw on one of his children during the trip, he momentarily sees them as the child he remembers before the snap into the adults they have become.

The central irony -- that a man who worked his whole life creating lines of communication, failed to have any communication with his children -- is there throughout and a bit heavy-handed at times, yet still enjoyable. It is a very sad film about the everyday situation many families have found themselves in. Some might say it's not a glamorous story, but some stories don't need to be. It is quite a depressing film right here at the holidays, but there are real stories that are depressing at the holidays! If you have a chance to see it, do, but be warned take some tissues. Somebody asked me on the way out of the movie sniffling if I was okay. Clearly I didn't learn the lesson of the film, because I simply replied: "I'm fine."