Everybody’s Fine

Directed by Kirk Jones
Starring Robert De Niro, Kate Beckinsale, Sam Rockwell, Drew Barrymore

“Hello Dad, can you put Mum on..?” It’s a timeworn phrase that’s kept many families quietly ticking over for years, and one that has long informed Robert De Niro’s on-screen parenting. Be it as the psychotic bully of ‘This Boy’s Life’, the hectoring working stiff of ‘A Bronx Tale’ or the semi-retired black-ops wet-jobber of ‘Meet the Parents’, Pops De Niro is a gruff old bludger who would only ever pick up the phone if he was passing it on his way to the toolshed.

The tension of those films, be it dramatic or comedic, is built on resentment, anger or misguided overprotection, but in ‘Everybody’s Fine’ – a remake of 1990 Italian flic ‘Stanno Tutti Bene’ - De Niro’s grown children avoid him as much as they can simply because they find him… well, just a little distant. Recently widowed, De Niro’s retired blue-collar geezer has little to do but tend his yard and so invites his kids for a big family nosh-up. When they all give him the brush off he decides to take a road trip to visit each one of them, with the vague, unformed intention of recombining his atomised family.

It’s a four-square set-up, but there’s only the barest flicker of familial friction heating the undercooked drama. And don’t be fooled by the jaunty trailer or upbeat home-for-the-holidays poster, this is drama all the way, and you’ll be as hard pushed as the cast evidently are to muster any interest. Sam Rockwell invests his role as De Niro’s well-adjusted slacker son with all the vigour of a man paying off a long-standing gambling debt, Barrymore and Beckinsale offer no more spark as his – again, perfectly centred – daughters, while De Niro himself does little more than huff around looking mildly disappointed that he didn’t take a bit more interest in his kids.

It’s all rather aimless, but the leaden-footed decision to include scenes with De Niro’s grown kids replaced by their ‘remember-me-like-this-daddy?’ pre-teen counterparts, a repellent and incessant ‘indie’ soundtrack and a saccharine epilogue terminally hobble any strides the film might have made.