Product: Everybody's Fine (2009)
Rating: 4.0
flawed but thoughtful family drama
With baby boomers moving ever closer to the age of retirement, an increasing number of mainstream American moviemakers have taken it upon themselves to deal with the issue ("The Savages" being probably the most notable example).The most recent effort is Kirk Jones` "Everybody's Fine," a touching family drama featuring Robert De Niro as a recently widowed retiree whose four adult children have spent their entire lives keeping secrets from him in an effort not to upset or disappoint him. When the kids can't seem to make the time to come and see him, Frank Goode heads out on the road to pay each of them a surprise visit. However, Frank doesn't always receive the welcome or the news he was hoping for when he arrives at each of his destinations. One of his kids, Robert (Sam Rockwell), is a supposedly successful orchestra conductor who is actually just a drummer in the ensemble; another, Amy (Kate Beckinsale), is a high-paid executive whose successful marriage and happy family life are not all that they appear to be on the surface; Rosie (Drew Barrymore) is a dancer in Las Vegas who has a child with her lesbian lover; and, most disturbingly, David is an artist who's currently in jail in Mexico on drug-smuggling charges. Frank is blissfully unaware of most of these details of his children`s lives, having been sheltered from the facts by both them and his late wife who felt it better not to let him in on the truth.Though it suffers a bit from its episodic structure and its tendency towards the lugubrious, "Everybody's Fine," which is a remake of an Italian film from 1990, is a generally moving and understated look at parent/child relationships in the 21st Century. With insightfulness and sensitivity, it explores the various and sundry aspects of the issue: adult children who are too busy to make time for their aging parents; parents who place burdensome and unrealistic expectations on their children; parents and children struggling to find something to talk about after a lifetime of never really communicating in an open and honest manner. And, throughout, the movie does a nice job of capturing the discomfiture and awkwardness of strained family relationships.De Niro effectively blanks himself into the role of a soft-spoken but gregarious man forced to confront some of the mistakes he's made in his life - and he is matched by a first-rate cast. There are also some impressively mounted scenes, such as a bizarre but strikingly realistic encounter with a young man in a railway station and a hallucinatory dream sequence late in the film that crystallizes much of the movie's purpose and theme for the audience.