What's Wrong with Everybody's Fine Starring Robert De Niro, Drew Barrymore, Sam Rockwell & Kate Beckinsale?

Everybody's Fine with Robert De Niro, Drew Barrymore, Sam Rockwell and Kate Beckinsale is another one of those Hollywood-hyped movies where the previews look cute, touching and definitely funny. When I was sent the promo asking me if I wanted to review the "heartfelt dramatic comedy," I jumped at the chance.

Had I known what the movie was really about, I might have watched it in a different frame of mind, expecting something darker and sadder, but no, I believed I was popping a touching and funny DVD in, and I was disappointed in the results. Everybody's Fine is not a cute film about a dad going on a cross-country lark to see his kids. It's a movie about a widower whose grown children are hiding several things from him, including one very dark secret about his oldest son, David.

When the kids won't come to visit him, Frank Goode (Robert De Niro) sets out across the country to visit them, but since he is ill, this is no happy-go-lucky lark. He first goes to visit David, but after camping out all night on David's steps, Frank journey's to the next house unaware that David is in a Mexican jail on drug charges. As Frank travels from one child's home to the next, he realizes each of his children is lying to him, not just about David, but about their own lives.

The movie is not without its merits. For one thing, it stars Robert De Niro, who is eloquent as Frank Goode. Everybody's Fine also has a poignant story line - early on the viewer learns Frank is suffering from thrombosis of the lungs due to a lifetime of coating telephone wires with PVC. The telephone lines paid for his children to become the "successes" he believes them to be, and the years exposed to the PVC is now killing him.

As Frank travels from home to home, following the ever-present phone lines, he discovers none of his offspring has lived up to what he believed they were doing. Not only does he learn that his expectations may have been too high, but that perhaps his wife knew some of the secrets and didn't tell him to protect him, like his children are now doing with David's troubles. The movie's finest scenes are when Frank uncovers one of David's paintings in a gallery - a painting of phone wires extending from pole to pole, and a brilliant scene where Frank has a vision/dream of talking with his four young children about why they are lying to him about their adult lives.

I might have enjoyed Everybody's Fine more, maybe even found the film thought-provoking had premieres not shown Drew Barrymore exchanging clever banter with her dad in an elevator as well as throwing snowballs at her brother. Cute scenes, right? Enjoy them - they are among the few cute scenes in a movie that often borders on dismal and depressing. Everybody's Fine shows a family with no moral center, who readily lie to each other but who are held together by the tenuous bonds of love and family.

Movies need to do a better job of "truth in advertising." Stop showing us the two or three cute scenes in the previews and let us know what the movie is REALLY about.

Everybody's Fine with Robert De Niro, Drew Barrymore, Sam Rockwell and Kate Beckinsale comes out on DVD on February 23, 2010 on Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment. The DVD's exclusive bonus features include The Making of Paul McCartney's "(I Want to) Come Home."

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