Everybody’s Fine | Drama | rated PG-13 (L) | starring Robert DeNiro, Kate Beckinsale, Sam Rockwell, Drew Barrymore | 1:39 mins
When all of his children cancel Thanksgiving plans with their widowed father, Frank Goode (Robert DeNiro) decides to pack a bag, hit the rails and deliver a surprise visit to each of them at their homes. During the course of the trip he is forced to confront his failings as a father as his visit is not greeted as expected with his two daughters (Kate Beckinsale & Drew Barrymore) and son (Sam Rockwell) being mysteriously evasive.
Everybody’s Fine is a light-weight, but very effective little picture about a family bonded by blood and love, but drifted apart by time, distance, age and dreams deferred. With mom having passed on, Dad spends his retired days familiarizing himself with the house upkeep. The highlight of his year being the holidays where he can see his kids once again all around the same table. Robert DeNiro makes something of a star-turn here from rugged tough guy to soft lovably pathetic grandfather. It’s such a fully realized turn audiences my be uncomfortable seeing DeNiro as such a powerless sad sack for once. It’s probably a reason his performance will go so underrated here. There is gutsy vulnerability in this work. He’s perfect in the movie. His portrayal of Frank is everybody’s father. A man who persists in seeing his grown children as they were when they were 10 and not the adults they have become. A man whose vision of his own parenting is wildly different then the way his kids remember their childhood. A man who has to explain his behavior as wanting what’s best when they took it as a challenge for his conditional love. It’s about a man, like most husbands and fathers, whose role as a provider for his family forced him to work long hours that are now only remembered by his kids as absentism. DeNiro is so authentic as this man. His warmth, his outdated attempts at connecting carries the movie.
The story is extremely simple. Hung across 3 set pieces as Frank visits each of his children and finds that things are really not quite as they had portrayed them to him. The movie is fueled entirely on emotion and held together by the realistic realization of this family. Given that everyone has a family in some way it’s amazing this is something so rarely realistically potrayed on the screen, but it is, making Everybody’s Fine a nice exception. As well as an antidote for those tired of the quirky indie family comedies.
The movie also works as something of a road trip movie. Very similar to the Alexander Payne critical darling About Schmidt – but far superior in that this journey of a lonely retired man didn’t make me want to put a gun to my head and hurry before I don’t hit old age. This is one of DeNiro’s best roles in a while. Everybody’s Fine is a fine, light family film that knows just where to squeeze to touch the heart-strings. It knows what it’s talking about. The fact that it doesn’t lay into sap and makes that squeeze ever so slightly is what makes it so effective.