Film Reviews 
 
 Everybody's Fine -- Film Review 
 
 "Everybody's Fine" 
 
 Bottom Line: A thoroughly fake movie with trite characters that is about, of all things, the need for truthfulness. 
 
 There isn't much that's fine in "Everybody's Fine," an embarrassing misfire for Kirk Jones, who once gave us the exhilarating comedy "Waking Ned Devine," and Miramax, a storied company now reduced to little more than a film library. Despite a cloyingly sentimental story that rings false in every moment, the production did attract a substantial cast headed by Robert De Niro. It's not going to help, though, when Miramax releases the film Dec. 4.Sometimes a filmmaker and a project just don't make any sense, and "Fine" is a case in point. The film is ostensibly a remake of Giuseppe Tornatore's 1990 film "Stanno Tutti Bene." That bittersweet Italian dramedy has been totally Americanized, which is fine, only wouldn't you want an American director aboard to supervise? Jones, who is British and has never made an American film, not only is the director here, he is the writer. His shaky footing on American soil and with American culture is painfully evident.The movie glides along a surface of complete inauthenticity. Characters have no depth, and all emotions get ladled on via a syrupy score and De Niro's strenuous acting. It's a no-go almost from the start.De Niro plays Frank, a man who has been rough on his kids, demanding their success as payment for his hard work supporting them through their formative years. Now he wonders why no one in his scattered family wants to visit him after their mother died. She was always the buffer, but now she's gone.True to his fashion, he ignores his doctor's advice to take things easy because of a lung condition and hits the road, traveling by bus or train -- he hates airplanes -- to visit his two sons and two daughters unannounced. Apparently, sneak attacks are the best approach with this family.You can pretty much guess that when his wife told him the kids were just fine all those years, she wasn't being frank. Indeed, the first son he visits, a painter in New York, has disappeared.So he drops in on one of his daughters (Kate Beckinsale), who lives with her husband and son in a tony Chicago neighborhood. She can't wait to get rid of him, but it's clear -- like everything in this movie, perhaps too clear -- that something is seriously amiss.En route to visit a second son, the long-distance telephone wires buzz with the siblings' urgent calls that alert one another to Dad's sneak visits and let you know the New York son is in deep trouble in Mexico.The second son (Sam Rockwell) doesn't quite have the job Frank expected. Later, Drew Barrymore, the other daughter, seems happy as a dancer in Las Vegas shows, but signals are everywhere that this too is a false front.What Jones intends here is a puzzle: Everything is so utterly predictable and the false fronts so obvious, was he really counting on audiences being surprised? Or, more likely, does he mean for you to watch how De Niro reacts to an entire family basically lying to their dad?There is no web of complexity or societal mischief for the protagonist to penetrate. He merely observes a dance of deceit, responds politely, but when his health finally and inevitably breaks down, he is in a position to demand the truth.What he "learns" is what has been apparent from the start. He pushed too hard as a father and, to protect him against disappointment, his children put on a show and play the happy family.What a long way to go for such a banal payoff. And the route is made longer by characters and situations that are equal parts bland and extraneous. Henry Braham's cinematography and Andrew Jackness' production design create eye-catching landscapes across America for Frank to wander through, but they feel alarmingly empty. ||||| Robert De Niro plays a widowed retiree named Frank in Everybody's Fine. And although Frank's not supposed to be a very sophisticated man, it requires saintly moviegoing patience I clearly don't have to put up with his level of unworldliness. For one thing, he shows up at the doorsteps of his four adult children, who are scattered across America, without calling ahead, expecting each to be home. What, it would kill him to pick up a phone? The guy spent a working lifetime manufacturing the protective coating that insulates telephone wire, fer chrissakes. The contradiction counts as galumphing irony in this calculatedly soppy, seasonally phony Americanized remake of Giuseppe Tornatore's 1990 Stanno Tutti Bene  which was bittersweet in the Italian original with Marcello Mastroianni as the poignant papa. 
 
 Then there's this: Frank, who hasn't seen his brood since the death of their mother a few months earlier, travels from kid to kid (each son or daughter secretly unhappy, lying to their pop, and not fine at all in his or her own way) by bus and train, toting a sad rolling carry-on bag. Thing is, Frank is the only American born in the age of Samsonite who doesn't know that rolling bags actually roll, don't you know, on little wheels that work quite well when the collapsible handle is extended and pulled. So until one of his kids clues him in, he lifts, carries, and schleps like a grandpa from the old country. 
 
 Well. The sight of the world-famous Robert De Niro, a powerful actor revered for playing tough guys who can smash Samsonite with their bare hands, pretending not to know how to pull a handle is so embarrassing that the ick ought to obscure the rest of the movie's falsehoods. Yet, as written and directed by British director Kirk Jones (Waking Ned Devine) with guidance, apparently, from Dr. Phil, the movie introduces offspring who are correspondingly awful, including Kate Beckinsale as a tense, rich ad exec in Chicago, Sam Rockwell as a drippy musician in Denver, and Drew Barrymore as an alleged dancer in Las Vegas. As for the artist son in New York City, jeez, he's nowhere to be found. Naturally, poor shnooky Frank just waits like a lox on the stoop of the kid's scary, downtown-y, artisty, and vagranty tenement building. At least he might have spent the time more profitably learning how to get his wheels rolling. D 
 
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– Critics are divided on Everybody’s Fine: Some think the family drama is okay because of Robert De Niro, and others think it’s awful despite him. What they’re saying: It’s “a thoroughly fake movie that is about, of all things, the need for truthfulness,” writes Kirk Honeycutt of the Hollywood Reporter. “Characters have no depth, and all emotions get ladled on via a syrupy score and De Niro's strenuous acting.” Rooting for these characters “requires saintly moviegoing patience I clearly don't have,” says Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly, adding that the script was written “under guidance, apparently, from Dr. Phil.” De Niro is “very good,” says Bill Goodykoontz of the Arizona Republic, but the film doesn’t trust its audience, and the ending is “pure sap.” It “may well be fine, but it could have been a lot better.” You may feel as if you’ve “been run over by the pathos van,” because the movie borders on “emotional fraud.” But it’s such a relief to see De Niro "in a project that does not stink” that Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune liked it anyway.