Robert DeNiro leads an acclaimed all-star cast Drew Barrymore, Kate Beckinsale and Sam Rockwell in Everybody s Fine, the heartwarming film that will move you to laughter and tears. When Frank Goode’s (DeNiro) grown children cancel a family reunion, the recent widower sets off on a cross-country journey to reconnect with each of them. Expecting to share in the joys of their happy, successful lives, his surprise visits reveal a picture that’s far from perfect. A family separated by physical and emotional distance finds a way to come together in a story that will touch your heart.
Bonus Features include The Making Of Paul McCartney’s (I Want To) Come Home, Deleted & Extended ScenesOne thing Robert De Niro can’t be accused of is avoiding a challenge. Everybody’s Fine obliges this respected actor, who made his bones playing dangerous, volatile men, to portray a low-key retiree named Frank Goode. Frank’s wife has died, and since she alone kept them in touch with their four grown offspring, now scattered around the country, he’s doubly cut off from family. When the Goode kids all find excuses to skip a planned reunion, Frank hauls out his suitcase and boards Amtrak with the intention of dropping in on each of them: the tightly wound Chicago ad exec (Kate Beckinsale), the Denver musician (Sam Rockwell) who’s supposedly a symphony conductor, the sweet Vegas showgirl (Drew Barrymore), and the Greenwich Village artist son who’s nowhere to be found. That son remains offscreen for the duration, and his portentous absence has the unintended effect of emphasizing what a hollow enterprise Everybody’s Fine is. Don’t blame the cast, who do yeoman work trying to define their long-unsatisfactory relationship as parent and children. None of the kids hate Dad; they just never found a measure of comfort with him, so now everybody, far from being fine, is living one fiction or another to keep it mellow. For his part, Frank suffers from an undefined illness brought on by his life’s work making insulation for phone wires; and lo, throughout his journey we’re urged to notice telephone cables slipping by outside the train or bus window–lines of communication!–even as the siblings are warily monitoring Dad’s progress by cell phone. Writer-director Kirk Jones once made an ersatz-Irish movie, Waking Ned Devine (1997), that vulgarized ethnicity in the interests of cheap laughs and patronizing sentimentality. In Everybody’s Fine Jones manages the neat trick of vulgarizing delicacy. The movie wants to pass for a sensitive meditation on the white lies people tell one another and themselves. But it so reeks of bad faith and calculation that the message isn’t worth delivering. –Richard T. Jameson
Stills from Everybody’s Fine (Click for larger image)
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Buy “Everybody’s Fine” For Only $16.97
January 10, 2006
#1
What a waste of a good cast. This could have easily been a 1970s’ ABC Movie of the Week. Substitute Ed Asner for Robert DeNiro, Connie Selleca for Kate Beckinsale, and so on and you get the idea.
The ending was predictable and pedestrian. You never got a sense that these people could even be remotely related rather than sisters and brother and father.
Also, for a road-trip movie, the settings lack authenticity of place. Why would Denver be the home of the Northwest Symphony? Did the screenwriter and director both confuse Boise for Denver?
January 10, 2006
#2
Tornatore’s “Stanno tutti Benne” (with Marcello Mastroiani), was skillfully developed for the Italian culture.
This remake lacks the essence of the Italian version, and even if the same writers were called as part of the cast for the “translation” (scenes repeated) to the American way of life, they couldn’t get the essence of the Scuro’s family in the original movie.
It would be nice for Miramax to release again the original version.
January 10, 2006
#3
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’s Tokyo 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’s Annie Hall but 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.
January 10, 2006
#4
Okay, this one’s a flinger; the first movie to be reviewed using my new Flinger Rating Scale. Instead of stars, picture little icons of sporks, which I was forced to use to fling my own foeces at the screen. As you see, however, this particular movie only comes in at three sporks, meaning it wasn’t all that bad as flingers go.
I liked this movie to a certain extent, in the simple-minded way you like movies when you’re guzzling wine while watching them… but found it a bit heavy on the forced pathos. Perhaps they could’ve pumped the pathos to the next level by having Robert DeNiro’s character coughing up blood into a snow-white handkerchief while walking by a dead clown lying on the railroad tracks. And then he discovers that his son the artist actually ran away to join the circus, got gang banged by a bunch of circus lions and went the way of Rod Stewart. If you attended public school in the 1970s then you know what I’m talking about. Those lions, he tried to resist but they were just so strong and… and yet after the attack, he still had the pluck to soldier on and get up on that stage and perform for his fans. However, while belting out The First Cut is the Deepest, his ordeal proved too much for him and he collapsed, only to be rushed to a nearby emergency room and have seven pints of puma come pumped from his stomach.
Anyway, getting back to this very sad yarn, the son who’s a percussionist could’ve turned out to be an organ grinder’s monkey. He kind of looked like that when he was standing there pathetically banging that drum. One thing that wasn’t explained was why Drew Barrymore’s character is both a lesbian AND has an illegitimate baby. Boy, I guess she was going through a rough patch! You can go ahead and flush this Christmas turkey down the Christmas toilet, you know, the one that still has your uncle Abe’s skid marks in it? Bottom line, stick a spork in this one. It’s done.
January 10, 2006
#5
In 2009, British director Kirk Jones (“Everybody’s Fine”, “Nanny McPhee”, “Waking Ned”) wrote and directed a remake of Giuseppe Tornatore’s award-winning 1990 film “Stanno Tutti Bene”. The film features cinematography by Henry Braham (“The Golden Compass”, “Nanny McPhee”, “Crush”) and music composed by Dario Marianelli (“The Soloist”, “Atonement”, “The Brave One”).
Where the original film had an operatic tie-in, Jones’ film “Everybody’s Fine” focuses more on a heartwarming family tale about family secrets and moving on after tragedy.
The film revolves around Frank Goode (played by Robert De Niro, “The Godfather”, “Taxi Driver”, “The Deer Hunter”, “Raging Bull”), the father of four who has kept himself busy taking care of the home after the death of his wife. His routine is taking care of the garden and taking his heart medication but with the annual family reunion coming up, Frank wants to continue the tradition of what his wife had done for years.
But when he calls his children, the majority of them are unable to come this year and tell him that they are all busy. So, Frank decides that why not take a road trip and visit each of them and see how they are doing. For Frank, he has been busy all his life working (working on the tubing that are on the telephone wires across America) and thus, his wife took care of the family and he never developed a strong relationship with them. But hopes he can do it now.
While Frank goes to visit his oldest daughter Amy (played by Kate Beckinsale, “Serendipity”, “Underworld” films”, “Pearl Harbor”), his son Robert (played by Sam Rockwell, “Moon”, “Frost/Nixon”, “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford”) and his daughter Rosie (played by Drew Barrymore, “E.T.”, “Charlie’s Angels” films”, “Donnie Darko”), all he hopes for his children is happiness.
But somehow during his visit, he realizes that things may not have been going so well and that they have not been truthful with him about their lives. Also, he is unable to get in touch with his older son David and only the sibling know the reason why.
VIDEO & AUDIO:
“Everybody’s Fine” is presented in Widescreen (2:40:1). The cinematography by Henry Braham is beautiful. From capturing the beautiful scenery to capturing the emotions of the top notch cast. The film through its cinematography captures family’s at their best and their worst.
Audio is presented in Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound. Also, included is a French Language track. The film is primarily dialogue driven and is front and center channel driven.
Subtitles are in English SDH, French and in Spanish.
SPECIAL FEATURES:
“Everbody’s Fine” comes with the following special features:
* The Making of Paul McCartney’s “(I Want To) Come Home” – (9:47) The making of “(I Want To) Come Home” and interview with Paul McCartney and how he became part of the film.
* Deleted & Extended Scenes – A total of seven deleted scenes: Book of Directions, An Artist (Extended Scene), Every Day Is a Storm (Extended Scene), Red River Valley, You Like Hot Dogs?, Airport, I’m Sorry (Extended Scene).
JUDGMENT CALL:
A heartwarming and tragic tale about a man who gets to know his family and realizes he didn’t know much about them as he thought.
Robert De Niro absolutely shines in this role, that begs of him to not be a tough man but a father who is realizing his loss but also how his wife kept his family strong but also not sharing with him the difficulties about their children and now he is learning first hand for himself how the little children that he once remembers are now adults and each are not living this perfect life as he had hoped.
“Everybody’s Fine” features an all-star cast with Drew Barrymore, Kate Beckinsale and Sam Rockwell but where the original film focused on the family life and as mentioned operatic in that the Italian film featured children named after opera characters and the children’s lives being close to those characters, “Everybody’s Fine” is focused more on the father. The siblings project this facade of a happy life but Frank (De Niro) is not dumb, he knows something is wrong and it all culminates up to the point where he finds out the truth of his son David, the son that he put the most pressure on when he was younger.
But most of all, realizing that his dead wife wanted to maintain order and out of love, she made Frank feel that everybody’s fine (thus the title of the film).
“Everybody’s Fine” is probably the most vulnerable we have ever seen of De Niro and just shows you the depth of his talent as an actor. Although the film had a limited three week run before the Christmas holiday, I enjoyed this film a lot.
Having grown up watching films about parents and their children through director Yasujiro Ozu who showed the pain and happiness of parenthood and the bond between the parents and their children, “Everybody’s Fine” is a sentimental film that touched my heart because I know many parents in which one significant other would tell the other who is the breadwinner that life is good but behind those words lies a facade and sure enough, things are not always that good as it may seem. Although, we are given a limited time to see Frank’s interaction with his children, it’s that journey and realization and discovery that touches you. De Niro brings Frank Goode to life.
Overall, “Everbody’s Fine” features a strong, magnificent performance from De Niro unlike anything he has done before. The film is sentimental, heartwarming and tragic but in the end, is a film that I adored.
Definitely recommended!