Everybody’s Fine

Everybody’s Fine (Robert De Niro, Drew Barrymore, Kate Beckinsale, Sam Rockwell) – Some films create emotion through fine writing, exceptional direction and perfect plotting.  Everybody’s Fine is not one of those films.  Instead, the audience’s tears are created through manipulation and fine acting.  I prefer the former but can live with the latter.  Robert De Niro plays the widower whose kids all cancel a weekend with pop, prompting him to take a cross-country trip by bus and train against doctor’s advice to surprise them.  This would never occur in real life and neither would the kids’ reactions.  They are glad to see him but send him away with various excuses after only a day.  This inexcusable behavior is explained away in the film by the disappearance of the fourth sibling in Mexico.  Instead of telling dad the disturbing news that his eldest child is missing, the kids decide to treat him like a parasite.  The brother’s plight isn’t the only secret the kids are holding from him.  Apparently, dad played breadwinner while mom held the close relationships with the kids.  The lines of communications between father and children barely exist as told to us in a metaphor that director Kirk Jones (Nanny McPhee) bangs us over the head with.  If not for the acting and cinematography, the film would be awful.  Instead it is just a mediocre waste of talent, headed by a sensitive performance by De Niro.   The movie is a tearjerker of the first order, which will bring it an audience but deserves few accolades.