Product: Everybody's Fine (2009)
Rating: 4.0
Four solid stars for this thought-provoking film about families
Frank Goode (Robert De Niro) has lost his wife; and, consequently, easy contact with his children and grandchildren. He invites all four of his children to a weekend at his house. None of them show up. Each has an excuse, but the main reason is that they don't feel all that close to their father anymore.In spite of the fact that Goode has pulmonary fibrosis, he decides that if his children won't come to him, he'll go to them. He decides to surprise them, which lasts about one visit, since the children do talk to each other quite a bit. So he does a 'planes, trains and automobile' trip to visit each of his children. The trip starts on a sour note when he discovers that his son David, isn't at his home in New York.The rest of the film is spent slowly teasing the family dynamics apart. Many of his children, as well as his late wife, apparently, feel/felt that he was too hard on them, that his expectations were too high. Yet that must be tempered by the fact that he had no problem what the children did, just that they were successful. In fact, he wanted them to be very successful.I immediately thought of the film 'About Schmidt', which came out seven years earlier. Like this film, Schmidt concerned a retired man who has just lost his wife. As played by Jack Nicholson, Schmidt had to learn to reconnect with his only child. That film was a better film, but 'Everybody's Fine' is just about as good.Solidly recommended. No violence, no gore, just a great film about family. Somehow I find those more satisfactory these days than the shoot-em-up films we see too often these days.