Product: Everybody's Fine (2009)
Rating: 1.0
The underlying message is disturbing.
Say what you will, and cast this review aside if you must, but Hollywood has an agenda. And this film drives that agenda all the way home, pardon my alluding to the final scene.To make my point, I challenge anybody to find a "chick flick" i.e. romantic comedy released in the last 10 years or so that doesn't have some overt promotion or acceptance of homosexuality. I suspect you will come up with only about one in five. It is part of the LGBT public policy targeting.Well, Kirk Jones certainly has placed that in this story (although not a romantic comedy), particularly in the character of daughter Rosie played by Drew Barrymore. But more than that, just as this group of siblings constantly lies to father Frank (Robert DeNiro), Mr. Jones is misleading his audience about fatherhood and family values. Sadly, this too appears to be an Hollywood agenda. DeNiro's character is very clearly an average Joe, indeed an amazingly everyday average guy. He worked hard in a factory, then around the house, etc. and "pushed" his children to apply themselves so as to become successful adults. Instead, ALL of the kids are a mess, and father's pushing is to blame.Frankly, if all the fathers in America were as Frank Goode was in this film, we would be a far better place I am sure. Instead, we are like the dysfunctional family who has come home to gather around the table seeking acceptance for what they have become, and in that acceptance will they finally lay their blame of dad and his strict values to rest.In presenting his agenda film, Mr. Jones couches it all in what I must admit is an astonishingly well acted and directed work. There is not a wasted bit of footage here. DeNiro is incredible, as are all the actors including those who play the "flashback" kids. I am saddened that Jones has wasted all this to lie to us, just as Frank's kids lied to him.