!WARNING! THIS IS NOT A FUN HOLIDAY COMEDY !WARNING!

We got free tickets to see Everybody’s Fine the other day. I tend not to do a lot of research about the film when it comes to free tickets. I knew the cast and had seen a trailer and simply assumed that it was one of those fun Christmas comedies they make every year. Well, it is not. In fact, it is utterly depressing!

It starts out light with Frank Goode (Robert DeNiro) going shopping to make a feast for his visiting children. He buys giant steaks, the best wine and even a new BBQ grill. When he gets home, one after another, his children call and say that they can’t make it. So he decides to go and visit all of them in the different cities that they now live in. His doctor tells him that he is not fit to travel and should stay at home and warns him that flying is out of the question. Frank goes on his trip anyway but decides it safer to go by train and Greyhound bus.

His first child David is not at his New York City apartment. Frank waits a day or so until he moves on to go visit his sun Robert (Sam Rockwell), the music conductor, in Chicago. By now the Franks children (they are all in their thirties) have passed on the message that Frank is coming to see the all and that they have to keep it a secret that their brother David is in a prison or hospital (nobody knows for sure) in Mexico. None of the kids want to lie to Frank about it, so they tell him that they don’t have time right now and that he can’t stay. So basically he is risking his health for nothing.

The movie gets more and more depressing with the news that all the children are keeping secrets or actually lying to Frank about their lives, and it just goes downhill from there. Don’t get me wrong, this is a really well made film but it is simply not what I expected or what the trailer promises. The Star Cast (Robert DeNiro, Drew Barrymore, Kate Beckinsale and Sam Rockwell) have done a fine job creating a real family. Especiall DeNiro is very good at capturing this character.

Go and watch the movie (I am not surprised that it has a rating of 8.3 on IMDb) but be warned that it is not your typical Christmas-everybody-is-happy-and-in-love kind of movie but an emotional film about a family growing apart in grief and then slowly mending again (with some comedic aspects in it). I haven’t seen the original Stanno tutti bene (1990) but it sounds like the story is the same, it has just been just Americanized for the new version. Has anyone seen the Italian version? Is it worth watching?

Tags: Drew Barrymore, Everybody's Fine, Kate Beckinsale, Robert DeNiro, Sam Rockwell, Stanno tutti bene

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 5th, 2009 at 4:20 pm and is filed under American, Watched at the Cinema. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.