Everybody's Fine Movie
This is a simple and down-to-earth tale of a nice man, “Everybody’s Fine”, a remake of Giuseppe Tornatore’s “Stanno Tutti Bene,” follows a widower (Academy Award® winner Robert De Niro) who embarks on an impromptu road trip to reconnect with each of his grown children only to discover that their lives are far from picture perfect. At the heart of “Everybody’s Fine” is the theme of family and physical and emotional distances traveled to bring the members back together. Kirk Jones (“Waking Ned Devine”) directs.
The aptly named Frank Goode (De Niro), a recent widower who just wants a reunion with his grown and far-flung children.When the kids don’t show (making various excuses) for a planned family weekend, Frank packs his wheeled suitcase and hits the road, visiting daughter Amy (Kate Beckinsale), a well-off executive with tensions at home; son Robert (Sam Rockwell), a musician whose career isn’t quite what Frank was led to believe; and daughter Rosie (Drew Barrymore, with her usual slurry charm), a dancer who’s got a few secrets of her own.
“Everybody’s Fine” becomes unexpectedly moving in its poignant, real-life details: the way a father, looking at his child, doesn’t see the grown-up but the laughing 6-year-old, or the way a cherished, faded under-the-Christmas-tree photograph speaks far more than any words could, or how the first thing Frank says, upon seeing a young junkie in a train station, is a gentle, “Do your parents know where you are?”
Ultimately, “Everybody’s Fine” becomes a holiday movie of rare sweetness; one likely to inspire a few calls home to Mom or Dad. And De Niro, at its center, gives a performance that’s perfect in its simplicity. Frank may lack the ruby slippers, but he knows that there’s no place like home.
