Item: Everybody's Fine
Rating: 5
Author: Christopher Monfette

The marketing for Everybody's Fine would have you believe that the film is a heartfelt dramedy about a widowed father coming to terms with the fact that his scattered children have, in a sense, outgrown him. From the smiling faces on the poster, or the liberal use of "Signed, Sealed, Delivered" throughout the trailer, one might expect a balanced combination of laughter and tears meant to simultaneously move and uplift theatergoers. In truth, however, Everybody's Fine is all tears and no laughter, perhaps the saddest and most joyless film released in the last several months. Any quirkiness or levity implied in the marketing is entirely the invention of clever editing and musical choices. The film itself is an unrepentant, lump-in-the-throat drama that works emotionally yet ultimately fails with regard to its storytelling.

The set-up is fairly evident from the outset. Robert DeNiro plays Frank Goode, a newly-widowed father whose children one-by-one cancel their holiday dinner plans to gather at home. Despite some ill-health, Frank decides to take a cross-country trip to surprise each of them. What the trailer implies is that each child is simply too busy for the visit, humoring Frank for a day or two and then shuffling him off to the next sibling in line. What the trailer fails to communicate is that David, Frank's fourth child, is missing in Mexico on a potential drug-and-alcohol bender, and that the reason that each child shuffles Frank along is that, for some unexplained reason, none of them want to communicate this fact until they've gathered more solid information. Why they don't think Frank would be able to handle this news, or why they can't keep it a secret while still politely entertaining their father, whom they love, is simply beyond the reasoning of this reviewer. Regardless, Frank shows up, one of his kids acts distant and aloof, puts him on a train – rinse and repeat until your heart is virtually broken by just how dejected and disappointed this sympathetic window is made by his children. And just when you think things can't get worse, of course, they do…

Warning: Smiles not included in actual film.

That the performances – not only by DeNiro, but by Drew Barrymore, Kate Beckinsale and Sam Rockwell as the children – are dynamic and engaging enough to make you feel deeply for Frank is ultimately undercut by the movie's flawed logic and a few overwrought emotional suckerpunches. Everybody's Fine eventually makes you feel exactly what it hopes that you will, but the film is simply so manipulative in getting you there that the emotion isn't so much earned as it is forced. A scene involving Frank's medication and a dinner-table conversation between Frank and his younger children toward the end of the film feel particularly false and invented. But amongst all the invented tragedy there are a handful of rather moving scenes that feel genuine and effortless. These are the moments where the promise of the film shines through, yet behind the half-earned tears of sympathy, one realizes that these same scenes suggest a much better, more effective film.

There's no doubt that many in the audience will walk away from Everybody's Fine believing that the film was good simply because they left with tears on their cheeks. But jumping once or twice during a horror film hardly qualifies some B-level shocker as The Exorcist and crying in a drama about a rejected old man doesn't mean that the film itself is truly effective. Certainly, DeNiro's performance will remind his fans that the man is a talented actor when he chooses to be, but the script is just too chock-a-block with invented drama, much of which could be dispelled with a simple, honest conversation, that the end result, however emotional, simply doesn't support all that precedes it.