Review of Everybody's Fine (2009) by Chads. — 09 Dec 2009

The DeNiro who curses, that's the DeNiro we're most familiar with; the DeNiro of the seventies and eighties, the DeNiro of verve and purpose. What ever happened to that guy? As a widower named Frank Goode, this iconic portrayer of miscreants and misfits may have his best part since he played an honest bus driver in Chazz Palmenteri's "A Bronx Tale".

In "Everybody's Fine", a remake of the 1990 Giusepppe Tornatore Italian original("Stanno tutti bene"), the DeNiro of Bananarama exaltation almost comes to fruition: "Robert DeNiro's waiting/talking Italian"(of course, he speaks English), and in the process, almost erases the memory of, for starters, his turn as a knife salesman in Tony Scott's "The Fan".

Granted, the role of a man who tries to reconnect with his adult children is far from classic DeNiro, but it's also far from sell-out DeNiro, or pissing-on-my-own-legacy DeNiro, too. To our relief, Frank never physically or sexually abused his children.

In the opening sequence, the lonely middle-aged man tends to his empty house and perfect lawn in preparation for a motherless get-together, the first since her funeral, which the moviegoer reads, as somebody who is tidying up a messy past, a possible scene of the crime.

Thankfully, the past wasn't too messy, nor the crime unforgivable. While Frank cusses in front of his grandson after taking a few bad whacks at some golf balls, the moviegoer remembers films such as the aforementioned "The Fan", and Michael Caton-Jones' "This Boy's Life", in which DeNiro's seemingly normal exterior hid a dark side.

At some point, he'd grimace. This time, Frank is not too heavy, not too light. He remains likable throughout the flashbacks. Frank simply loved his children, the oldest, in particular, to death.