Americans and their perverse obsession with happy endings. Especially during the holidays. Everybody’s Fine is a remake of an Italian film by director Giuseppe Tornatore (who made the wondrous Cinema Paradiso). In it, a retired Sicilian bureaucrat, played by the great Marcello Mastroianni, heads to the mainland to surprise his five children, only to find that none of them are doing particularly well, despite their reports to the contrary. He returns home and visits his wife’s grave where he tells her, with profound irony, that “stanno tutu bene (everybody’s fine).” The American remake follows the same basic plot and even duplicates the final graveside chat. But unlike the Italian version, this new film strips away the irony entirely. When the father says everybody’s fine, he means it. Because this is America…mere days from Christmas…and ba humbug to all that downer realism!

Frank (Robert DeNiro) is a recent widower who doesn’t know what to do with himself in retirement. When each of his four grown children back out on a reunion at the last minute, Frank decides to pay them a surprise visit instead. First up is David in New York City. But try as he might, Frank cannot find his son. Next up is Amy (Kate Beckinsale) in Chicago, who tells her father she’d love to spend more time with him but has to leave the following day for a business trip. Robert (Sam Rockwell), an orchestra musician in Seattle, gives a similar, half-hearted excuse. Frank’s last stop is Las Vegas to see his youngest daughter, Rosie (Drew Barrymore), who, like her siblings, is too busy to make much time for her lonely father.

What Frank doesn’t know is that David is in some sort of trouble in Mexico and his brother and sisters are trying to figure out what’s going on without upsetting their father, who’s recently been having heart problems. The truth is, however, they hide lots of things from their domineering dad, telling him what he wants to hear, i.e., marital bliss, skyrocketing careers, scholastic success, instead of the truth—that they’re all in the midst of domestic and vocational implosions. Some of this Frank can sense no matter how hard they try to conceal it from him. But the full measure of their tragic dysfunction is still waiting in the wings.

Everybody’s Fine feels remarkably episodic. This feeling is perhaps inescapable given the travelogue nature of the film. However, while the Italian version used the travelogue as a diagnostic commentary about Italy entire, the American version seems more interested in simply having pretty backdrops out the characters’ windows. There is no rule that says remakes must duplicate the themes of the originals on which they’re based, but jettisoning this important subtheme transforms a piece of critical commentary into little more than a monotonous gimmick.

DeNiro, who hasn’t made the wisest of career choices the past decade or so, is still an astonishingly good actor, the full measure of which he gives us only glimpses of here. He does the best he can with what he is given. Barrymore too exudes a surprisingly strong effervescence, though among her sibling co-stars, hers is the only memorable performance. While the story would not have had greater resonance even if all of the performances had soared, their unevenness highlights the lack of adequate character development and the all-too-visible nature of the script’s clichéd architecture.

Kirk Jones, who has only directed a handful of films, is actually quite talented. He shows a remarkable ability to capture quiet, sedate moments. But he also wrote the screenplay, and it is here that he does the greatest damage to his work. While specific moments in Everybody’s Fine work, they never cohere to form anything more substantial. And yet I’d by lying if some of those individual moments don’t sneak up on you when you think you have the film all figured out and tug at your tear ducts.

© Copyright 2009 Brandon Fibbs. All rights reserved.