Everybody's Fine movie review (2009)

“Everybody's Fine” tells the story of his journey and his discoveries along the way. If we have seen a dozen movies in our lifetime, we can feel pretty safe in predicting that each child will reveal, and present, a different kind of problem. That Larry will discover things he didn't know about himself and them. That he will re-evaluate his life in the process. That a great deal of the American landscape will pass by on the screen. And, since all story pegs exist to hang things from, his lifetime of manufacturing telephone cables will result in many, many shots of telephone lines stringing along the way, symbolizing lines of communication. What will we do when the need for land lines disappears?

All that could redeem this thoroughly foreseeable unfolding would be colorful characters and good acting. “Everybody's Fine” comes close, but not close enough. The children are: David, an artist who seems not to be at home in his marginal New York apartment building, but whose work is on display in the gallery downstairs; Amy (Kate Beckinsale), a Chicago advertising women with a high-flying lifestyle; Robert (Sam Rockwell), a classical musician in Denver, and Rosie (Drew Barrymore), a successful professional dancer in Las Vegas with a luxurious apartment.

The more the children feed him vague evasions about David, the more Frank realizes how much they have always concealed from him. He isn't stupid, and he picks up on stray dialogue and other clues to realize their lives are all deceptive fictions. And so is his own?

“Everybody's Fine” is based on a 1990 Giuseppe Tornatore film named “Stanno Tutti Bene,” which starred Marcello Mastroianni as a man in the same situation. Mastroianni and De Niro are not interchangeable. Mastroianni is effortlessly relaxed and embracing, the life source in a body. De Niro is not. There are many things he does better than anyone else alive, but playing nice isn't one of them.