Grade: B-
Bottom Line: Not your usual Christmas cheer, but De Niro’s touching portrayal of a father who can sense that everybody’s not fine is worth a visit to the theater.
Every December starts with the release of a holiday fluff of a movie that is meant to make us yearn for decked halls and nostalgic for family dinners. Miramax’s marketing campaign uses clever editing to suggest that Everybody’s Fine fits the bill perfectly; the story is of a widowed father, Frank (Robert De Niro) looking to reunite his family. However, behind the Christmas-friendly one-sentence synopsis and a trailer filled with one-liner quips (virtually every joke from the movie is in those two minutes), is a film far more sentimental and heartfelt than the usual Christmas comedy. Another unusual aspect is that the film’s first 90 minutes (of a total 95 minute-running time) have nothing to do with Christmas.
The film opens eight months after the passing of Frank’s wife, as he eagerly prepares for the arrival of his kids. When all four of his offspring suddenly cancel on him with a variety of convenient and unconvincing excuses, he takes to the road, against his doctor’s advice. Director Kirk Jones uses voiceovers from Frank’s “children”, Amy (Kate Beckinsale), Rosie (Drew Barrymore) and Robert (Sam Rockwell), to help with the story’s often tediously slow pace, but is only moderately successful. As Frank travels from one city to the next, it is only De Niro’s unique charisma that prevents the endless postcard-friendly shots of canyons and forests from growing stale. But even with De Niro’s immense acting chops, the premise of the film quickly becomes a tough sell. It grows hard to believe and even harder to understand, the actions of Franks evasive family as they use every lie imaginable to conceal the truth from their father.
The eventual payoff, when it comes, however, is far more rewarding than what can be found in the majority of films from this time of year. Rarely does a holiday movie offer the sort of tangible character development that truly makes you see the importance of gathering as a family. While there is one scene toward the very end that would tug at the heartstrings of even the toughest moviegoer (all I’ll say is that it involves Frank looking over a canvas), the film features too much De Niro to ever cross the line into Nicholas Sparks territory.
A remake of Giuseppe Tornatore’s 1990 Stanno Tutti Bene, Everybody’s Fine is unlikely to ever warrant a second viewing simply because it drags too often for too long. However, De Niro’s touching portrayal of a father who can sense that everybody’s not fine is worth a visit to the theater.