Everybody's Fine Review

Kirk Jones directed Everybody's Fine is a remake of the 1990 Italian film Stanno Tutti Bene but has very little in common with Stanno Tutti Bene. While Stanno Tutti Bene impressed the audience Everybody's Fine seems to be packed with too much with the same basic sadness in every frame. Who"s fine? Everybody"s Fine ponders seems to ponder around the question and Kirk Jones unfortunately doesn't seem to have any answer for it.

Once regarded as the one of America's best actors Robert De Niro hasn't delivered a good movie or good performance in a long time. Although he tried re-inventing himself venturing into comedies but he is yet to stroke gold. Everybody's Fine doesn't do any good to his career either. Everybody"s Fine is exactly the sort of role that De Niro doesn"t need at this point in his career where he doesn"t seem to know what he was doing.

A lonely widower Frank Goode (Robert De Niro) spends his lonely days keeping his empty nest tidy and its surrounding foliage immaculate in the way the retired tend to do. He is saddened when all of his four children cancel their visit after the death of his wife. So he embarks on a cross-country trip to visit each of his child Kate Beckinsale (Amy), Sam Rockwell (Robert) and Drew Barrymore (Rosie). He has leaned huge expectations on his children. Frank wants to know that they all are happy in their lives.

As he goes from home to home, he begins to realize some uncomfortable truths about the relationship he has with them and, even worse, that there"s a bigger secret they"re all hiding. Nothing is quite as he believed it was as his wife had told him it was. It"s not that the kids don"t love Dad: it"s that, perhaps, they love him too much, and have sought to protect him from the hard truths of their lives. The drama in how the lives of the kids are not fine is all deceptively low-key -- this is no screeching, sappy melodrama but a powerfully affecting story, and emotions will run very high by the end.

Everybody"s Fine eventually leads to that question of whether or not to trouble the ones we love with our bad news. Everybody"s Fine isn't enough to give this story the emotional punch it requires to make an impact in this coming holiday season. Everybody"s Fine is a terrific choice for those who want something more in-depth from their Xmas viewing than tinsel and tired sentimentality. It rather seems Everything's Wrong!