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Rating: What can you do when you're alone? What can you do when your last months have been lived in solitude and old age is advancing? You can tidy up the garden, finely cut the grass, enjoy the sun, put the house in order, but above all, you can return with your mind to memories, to your wife who died a few months ago, to your children scattered all over the States. It happens that this life you have been living alone is not alleviated by visits from your children, who make excuses not to attend a dinner organized by Frank (Robert De Niro) with the goal of reuniting the family.
From this event, the old Frank gains strength to see his four children again, despite the negative opinion of the doctor who advises him not to travel. But the depressive state caused by the loss of his wife increasingly convinces him that his relationship with his boys and girls must be strengthened. He never accepted that his children only confided in their mother, while he ensured their future with a job that jeopardized his own health.
Thus begins the journey, actually started in 1990 by Giuseppe Tornatore with the film of the same name. In fact, this one by Kirk Jones is a remake, released in Italian theaters in November 2010. Jones's film, compared to the original, leaves out the social description to focus more on the main character of Frank, played in a balanced way and without too much sentimentality by a good Bob De Niro. The entire story thus revolves around De Niro and ends up becoming a modern road movie toward rediscovering his own family. In fact, Frank’s real goal is to see his children again and assess their situation, having always been a demanding father.
Amy (Kate Beckinsale) is an advertising consultant, Robert (Sam Rockwell) a member of an orchestra, Rosie (Drew Barrymore) a successful dancer. Everything seems to be calm in these three children's lives, while one, David, despite repeated attempts to reach him, does not show himself. Frank realizes something is wrong and that his children, under the apparent veil of happiness, are hiding something from him. It's Frank's goal to understand and live as much as possible with his children. In this rediscovery, however, he has overlooked a fundamental element, namely his own health condition, which worsens rapidly, landing him in a hospital bed, where he receives the terrible news...
Memories painfully return to mind, the lived moments resurface in a sea of emotional difficulties. What had been certainly a dramatic film for about an hour but relieved by some situations and some ironic remarks, becomes in the last twenty minutes an escalation of sequences with high sentimental content, with truly moving peaks. But what might seem like a melodrama playing all its winning cards on sentimentality is instead a vivid and visually appealing film (good photographic work by Henry Braham) that tackles a rarely addressed but real theme: the loneliness and difficulties of all those elderly who find themselves, unfortunately, having to continue life's journey without someone to descend the stairs with. For this, due to the good performances of the actors, the story, and how it is told to us, Everybody's Fine is an excellent film, that went far too unnoticed.
"Are You Happy?"
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