EVERYBODY'S FINE

Everybody's Fine is a remake of the Giuseppe Tornatore movie Stanno Tutti Bene that is written and directed by Kirk Jones and stars Robert De Niro, Drew Barrymore, Sam Rockwell and Kate Beckinsale.

Eight months after his wife's demise, a widower's kids all of a sudden cancel a visit to him that weekend. He decides to see all his four kids, discovering that their lives are not perfect. After visiting his physician and being cautioned about his health, Frank Goode (Robert De Niro) goes to New York, and sits on his son David's doorstep. David never comes, but Frank sees one of David's paintings in an art gallery. He slips an envelope under David's door.

Then he visits his daughter Amy (Kate Beckinsale), who says it's not a good time to visit. The next morning, Frank goes with Amy to her lavish office and hears her agency's pitch for a TV ad. She takes him to the bus station to see Robert.

As Frank travels to each of his kids's homes, the film cuts to phone conversations between the siblings. David is in some type of problem in Mexico, and Amy is going there to find out what is going on; the sisters and Robert (Sam Rockwell) agree to not tell their father about David until they know the fact.

Frank arrives in Denver expecting to see Robert perform the orchestra. It turns out Robert is only a percussionist. He also says Frank's visit is at a bad time, so within hours Frank goes to Las Vegas to meet Rosie (Drew Barrymore). Frank is adamant that each visit is a surprise, but Robert calls Rosie to caution her.

Frank is harassed by a assailant who destroys Frank's prescription tablets. Frank manages to escape and scrapes up some of the trampled tablets. He has a dream that his son David is in jail.

He arrives in Las Vegas. Rosie picks him up in a stretch limo and tells him she was in a big show that just ended. She takes him to her elegant apartment, where her friend brings over a child for last-minute babysitting. Frank overhears a message being left on an answering machine, indicating the apartment is borrowed from Rosie's friend. He is not happy, knowing all his children are lying to him.

Frank flies back home without his tablets when he has a heart attack in the toilet. Frank has another vision of his kids as young kids; in the vision, he knows Amy's husband has left for another woman and Rosie's friend's child is really Rosie's kid. The kids and their mother always kept the unpleasant truth from Frank. While Frank thought he was encouraging his kids, they thought he was pressuring them and would be let down in how their lives really turned out. Then in the hospital, where he wakes up in bed with Amy, Robert, and Rosie standing there. They inform him David has died.

Frank goes back to New York to buy David's painting but it has already been sold, the gallery sells him another painting by David that is more appropriate to him, a landscape showing PVC-covered power lines (Frank made PVC-covered cable for years). He visits his wife's tomb and talks to her.

The feature film opened on December 4, 2009. Rotten Tomatoes reported that 47% of critics gave the picture positive reviews based on 85 reviews with an average score of 5.3/10. It is a version of Everybody's Fine (1990, Giuseppe Tornatore)