Review

Review Date: 6-December-09
Spoiler Rating: Medium
Juju Judgment: Junk

Everybody's Fine (2009)

For years now I have been seeing a cheery, avuncular gentleman passing out Jehovah's Witnesses pamphlets at the downtown transit mall. He always greets me like an old friend even though he knows I won't sample his wares. A better advertisement for his creed than anything he might distribute, he conveys a message of general, all-purpose goodness that is very different from a blaring article about "Do This" or "Beware of That." If he resembles anything in the Watchtower it is those drawings of lush fields strewn with pandas and lions: vague, rather silly, and well meaning.

Everybody's Fine is like that man on the transit mall. But while I would never dream of calling him junk, I cannot give the movie a pass just because it drips with gentle benevolence. For whereas religion is only tolerable if it is general and fuzzy (and that barely), a major motion picture ought to have definite shape and possibly a point. Everybody's Fine — the story of a widower who hits the road to find his four adult children — is an exemplar of wishy-washy. Borrowing from an Italian film of almost 20 years ago, writer/director Kirk Jones lines up the pieces of a script that hints at emotional truths but suppresses all leanings towards depth.

The dad is a bit of a sad sack, either by nature, or because of the loss of his wife, or because his kids have all bailed on a reunion at his house, or because he is played by Robert De Niro. His first stop is New York, where he fails to locate his son David. Heading to Chicago, he spends a night with the Type A daughter (Kate Beckinsale) who has that too-taut, too-thin look of a woman on the edge. She and her family react strangely to his surprise visit, but the viewer knows this is partly caused by a secret she and her siblings are keeping concerning David's whereabouts. From Chicago the dad goes to Denver where his other son (Sam Rockwell) is performing with a traveling symphony. More filial subterfuge occurs, then it's off to Las Vegas to see the Type B daughter (Drew Barrymore) who welcomes him warmly but exhibits more suspicious signs. Her old man deems the trip a disaster and flies home wondering why his children don't take him into their confidence.

Such a story could go either way: it could end on a rosy note by showing the cathartic effects of family walls finally crumbling; or it could end on a darkly admonishing note by showing the price a parent pays for pushing his kids in a direction that looks like up but is actually away. Smushing these options together until they are indiscernible, Everybody's Fine ends without the payoff of seeing how the father reconnects with his children and without a demonstration of repentance or lessons learned. A ridiculous out-of-body/dream sequence fills in holes that should have been addressed during the trip (his family is a hotbed of modern issues), and then a tear-jerker scene fades into Kodak moments at a Christmas gathering. After sitting through the journey, which is pretty dull as road trips go, it seems unfair that we don't witness more of its outcome. And heck, if I am going to get a happy ending dumped on me, it should at least have pandas.

Copyright © 2009 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.