Father Knows Best

You wouldn’t know it from watching its fun-ish trailer, but Robert DeNiro’s Everybody’s Fine is way sadder than the powers that be would like you to think.

The movie is actually a bit of a downbeat bore, to be honest, but it does boast a pleasant performance from the actor, who anchors it as nicely as possible – that’s at least until unravels in the most predictable, treacly way halfway through.

After that, not event the Oscar-winning powerhouse could keep me from checking the time, fidgeting in my seat, and yawning up a storm. This ain’t like, The Family Stone, which a few people have mentioned the trailer evoked.

DeNiro plays Frank Goode in this Kirk Jones-directed remake – who knew – of Giuseppe Tornatore’s Stanno Tutti Bene. Frank is a widower and father of four who, after his grown children cancel on a family visit, decides to embark on an impromptu road trip to reconnect with each one of them…only to discover that their lives are far from picture perfect.

The movie opens with Frank alone in the home he once shared with his late wife. We see him take care of all the chores, from the cleaning to the gardening he probably never ever did to the shopping of the goods for the family barbecue that will not happen.

We see him visit and make chitchat with his doctor and supermarket employees, who supply his only interaction. We see go through the motions.

It’s amusing to see DeNiro do these mundane things at first, and also off-putting. Like, you just know right then and there that he’s in for a world of pain, y’ know. To see him at the beginning of his day, and then later on, all alone, it’s quite sad. And effectively moving.

Once he learns none of his children is coming home – not Drew Barrymore’s Vegas-based entertainer Rosie, not Amy, Kate Beckinsale’s successful ad exec, and certainly not his orchestra conductor son Robert (Sam Rockwell) – Frank becomes determined to get them all at the same table under the same roof.

Because that’s what any good DeNiro character would do. And you almost, from the trailer, expect Everybody’s Fine to turn into a road romp of sorts. It doesn’t.

He starts by heading to New York to find his artist son David, with no luck, and from there he makes his way west, learning along the way that everything he thought he knew didn’t begin to cover what is actually happening with his kids.

His wife, you see, filtered the information they shared with their parents, so Frank didn’t have to worry. As Rosie tells him, their mom was better at listening, while he was always better at talking.

I won’t spoil the truths Frank learns, but I will say that they get easier and easier to guess. Which is incredibly boring if you’re seating in the audience. Darn that misleading trailer!

At the heart of Everybody’s Fine is family, and physical and emotional distances traveled to bring the members of a family back together – soundtracked to a Paul McCartney original, no less.

Most everybody is fine in Everybody’s Fine (that was a hint, by the way), and Frank gets to know his family a bit better, but ultimately the movie’s not so great that you should run to watch it this weekend.

My Rating **

Photo: Miramax Films.