Everybody’s Fine…Relatively Speaking

Optimistically titled, “fine” seems an erroneous adjective to describe this movie’s characters, chiefly Frank Goode played admirably by Robert De Niro. With its merry marquee depicting a Christmas tree and four jolly faces, audiences may wonder who declared “Bah Humbug” on this presumable holiday tale.

The film – a remake of the Italian original, Stanno Tutti Bene – tells the story of widower Frank Goode’s cross-country quest to surprise each of his children after they send dubious regrets for a family reunion (even after the wine and filet mignon had been purchased!). But as each child’s resentment toward their father’s pushy personality is revealed, and the façade they maintain to satisfy his expectations is found out, Frank feels there is something suspect lurking beneath the surface of their stilted cordiality.

Ignoring his doctor’s advice to forgo traveling due to a lung condition, Frank first pays a visit to his son David (Austin Lysy) who’s supposedly an artist in New York City. But after a lonely night of waiting in a sad diner, Frank slides an envelope under David’s door and heads to Chicago where he drops in on daughter Amy (Kate Beckinsale). When she contrives a reason explaining why her old man can’t stay a few days, he takes the train to Denver and a semi truck to Las Vegas where Robert (Sam Rockwell) and Rosie (Drew Barrymore) each welcome their father with meager, artificially sweetened doses of hospitality. It is in these tepid scenes of banal dialogue and uninspired performances – save for that of Mr. De Niro – that viewers sense the siblings’ peculiar resolve to keep a secret from their father, undoubtedly one pertaining to their brother, David. What director Kirk Jones (Waking Ned Divine) probably meant to be a sort of puzzle throughout the movie was foiled by a lack of complexity and surplus of predictability.

Each scene is a slightly tweaked variation of the one before it and follows a simple formula in which Frank appears, talks with kid, tenderly interrogates kid, and gets politely shooed away by kid via pathetic excuses. Perhaps the filmmakers reasoned De Niro’s moving reactions to his children’s blatant dishonesty would be enough to win audiences or that provocative mystery could be replaced with a saccharine score. One of the most poignant scenes doesn’t occur until late in the film after Frank’s health inevitably breaks down (that’s what happens when you don’t follow Doctor’s orders, after all), and is merely a figment of Frank’s subconscious. Jones creatively incorporates footage of telephone wires during the kids’ hush-hush conversations, apparently linking the imagery with Frank’s former job working for the local wire factory, but this artistic touch could’ve stood to make a few more fingerprints and seemed strange given the film’s clearly less than esoteric intent.

It takes far too long for Frank to demand an answer for his kids’ elusive behavior, and the payoff is disappointing at best. The last minutes sum up an important lesson for Frank as he purposes to accept and support his children even if they aren’t conducting orchestras and performing nightly at the Bellagio.

Just as it is generously attributed to Frank’s family, the word that can be best applied to this film’s description is, “fine.”

2.5 stars out of 5