Product: Everybody's Fine (2009)
Rating: 3.0
An Estranged Father Take a Lugubrious, Sentimental Cross-Country Journey
Family dysfunction is given a lugubrious, sentimental treatment by writer/director Kirk Jones (Waking Ned Devine) in what is actually a remake of a 1990 Italian film,Stanno tutti bene, written and directed by Giuseppe Tornatore, no stranger to sentiment since he made the neo-classic "Cinema Paradiso". The earlier film starred the legendary Marcello Mastroianni as a Sicilian civil servant who travels throughout Italy to pay surprise visits to his children after his wife has died. This mirror version stars the equally legendary Robert De Niro as Frank Goode, a former blue-collar worker living in upstate New York, doing the same thing with his grown children. The first part of the plot reminds me of an even earlier classic, Yasujiro Ozu'sTokyo Story, which told the story of an elderly couple who visit their grown children in Tokyo only to discover they have no time for them. That film was a subtle classic that didn't telegraph its emotional impact around contrived plot turns.The same cannot be said for this turgid 2009 drama which bears the sometimes unbearable stamp of manipulation in Jones' overly deliberate treatment with sometimes too-perfectly composed shot compositions courtesy of Henry Braham's immaculate cinematography. The plot follows Frank on his voyage of discovery as he settles into his unfulfilling widowed existence. After being rebuffed by his four children to come home for the holidays, he decides to take matters into his own hands and visit each one of them despite a serious heart ailment. He begins to realize it was his wife who had been the emotional conduit that kept the family in touch despite the divergent paths they all took. Frank sets out by train and bus to surprise each of them in their locales. The first is David, an artist living a boho-type lifestyle in Manhattan, but he isn't home for reasons that will become clear later in the story. Then it's off to see Amy, a successful, Type-A Chicago advertising executive living a life out of the pages of Architectural Digest.Frank moves on to Denver to meet his son Robert, a symphony percussionist whom Frank thought was a conductor, and finally to Las Vegas where he visits Rosie, a dancer living in a luxurious apartment. Needless to say, things are not what they appear, and Frank becomes aware of how estranged he truly has become from his children as revelations start to unfold like clockwork. As an actor, De Niro seems to have settled into a relatively passive figure only evoking the heat of his past performances during key moments. Unfortunately, that happens in the film's worst scene, a hallucinogenic fantasy scene where Frank is talking to his memory of his children as toddlers only to have them talk back like their adults (a bit like the classroom scene in Woody Allen'sAnnie Hallbut without the laughs). Otherwise, De Niro makes his character a befuddling, somewhat endearing presence throughout. Kate Beckinsale plays Amy efficiently but not too deeply. The ad pitch during her sequence is the one unexpectedly funny bit in the whole film.Sam Rockwell fares better as the son since the sense of disappointment is palpable between father and son in his scenes with De Niro. Drew Barrymore uses her natural warmth and likeability to play Rosie as Frank's obvious favorite, a daughter who won't do anything to let her father down. The always watchable Melissa Leo (Frozen River) shows up in a convenient but touching cameo as a sympathetic truck driver who bonds with Frank over their recent spouse losses. The whole plot executes on a series of conveniences such as the blatant connection between Frank's former job in covering PVC cables and the overlapping voiceovers of the siblings on moving images of telephone wires. The 2010 DVD release is weak as these types of releases go with the only extras being seven deleted/extended scenes (interesting but excisable) and an interview with Paul McCartney, who wrote and performed the appropriately sentimental song, "I Want to (Come Home)", played over the closing credits.