Every holiday season needs to have some sort of family get-together on the big screen. Last year we had the surprisingly good Nothing Like the Holidays. This year we get the flawed yet highly effective Everybody's Fine with Robert De Niro taking his turn as the family's focal point. This movie affected me so much more than I was expecting. Of course, those emotional moments were tempered by its distracting flaws as I kept thinking of better ways the necessary exposition could have been handled. Fortunately, there was enough good stuff in there for me to walk out happy for the experience.
Everybody's Fine is not a movie that everyone is going to like. It may be a touch too overwrought at times and other times it may just feel a little bit silly. I think what will truly inform your ability to enjoy this film, or get it at any meaningful level, will be your life experience. I have found that your personal life experience can be an important tool to bring with you into the movie theater. Much has been said about critics being objective. I do not necessarily believe this to be a good thing. I am not saying that we should not be optimistic and open to what the movie offers, but that is only part of it. What are we if not a collection of experiences which foster biases? Everybody has them, it is natural, we must use them properly with respect to movies. If I do not use my unique experience in my evaluation, what good am I? Trying to be completely objective would just end up watering down my opinion, rendering it meaningless. Now, as interesting as this is, this is more a conversation for another time and place. Suffice to say my experiences informed my level of involvement with Everybody's Fine.
At the center of the story is Frank Goode (Robert De Niro). Frank is a retired factory worker, where he spent his days coating phone lines with that protective sheath. The father of four was recently widowed and is home alone. Bored and lonely with the holidays approaching, he puts together a family reunion at his home. He cleans up, goes and buys wine and steaks, only to have all of the children cancel at the last moment.
This cancellation sends Frank out on the road, by train as a lung condition precludes air travel. He is determined to visit all of his children who are spread all the way across the country. Each successive stop reveals something about his children that he did not know. It turns out their lives are not quite as sunny as he believed them to be.
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