Director: Kirk Jones
Cast: Robert De Niro, Sam Rockwell, Kate Beckinsale, Drew Barrymore
Certificate: 12A
Trailer

You know when you ask someone how they are and they say they're fine, but they're not fine? This is two hours of that. After his wife dies, Frank (De Niro) finds he has no contact with his kids anymore. So he decides to drop in on each of them around the country, completely unannounced. They all say that they're fine. But they're not fine.

Meet Amy (Beckinsale). She's a successful, married ad executive, living the high life with a kid and a modern house. She says she's fine. But she's not fine. Her husband left ages ago and her son blames them both. Rosie (Barrymore) is a dancer in Vegas. She says she's fine. But she's not fine. What she is is stuck with a baby and no daddy. And finally, Robert (Rockwell), a celebrated conductor and musician. He says he's fine. He's not. His dreams have left him playing percussion at the back of the orchestra. As for eldest son David? Well, he's missing in Mexico, not that anyone's telling Frank.

And so the drama continues, part road movie and part family reunion. Of course, Frank meets people on the bus and train, having life affirming conversations and staring out at expansive landscapes - he tells all and sundry about his old career, making the PVC coating for telephone wires. And, naturally, he has a prescription he needs to take for some ailing medical condition. There aren't many boxes left to tick - this is a textbook piece of sentimental tosh.

At times, Kirk Jones avoids excessive emotion, relying on a subdued Robert De Niro to show his more relaxed, human side. Placing him alongside a kid playing golf, or sitting him with a squeaky suitcase infront of San Rockwell's orchestra reaps decent results. But otherwise the director of Nanny McPhee pours it on way too thick. A daydream fantasy where Frank's children (suddenly 7 years old again) tell him the truth about their lives at a rainy barbeque is a huge mistake.

It's a shame given the talent on show. Barrymore and Beckinsale are better than this, as is Rockwell. And De Niro can do pathos, but he can't swim through a sea of melodrama. So instead he drones on and on about telephone wires. It's a touch almost as wry as the title, Everybody's Fine. It's a bit like irony. If irony were drowned in a vat of brie. Family may be a big thing in Italy, but this cheesy remake of Stanno Tutti Bene makes Tornatore's original look like The Godfather.

VERDICT

This contrived remake wastes its cast with such a soppy script. Everybody's Fine. This is not.

Your rating