Los Angeles, California (CNN) -- If you stared at empty seats around your Thanksgiving dinner table, Robert DeNiro's newest film could help. Parents who want their kids home for Christmas may do well by persuading them to see "Everybody's Fine," which opens next Friday in U.S. theaters. "I'm hoping it might catch the moment, and it might catch the Christmas spirit and the Thanksgiving spirit," director-writer Kirk Jones told CNN over coffee in Hollywood. The movie is targeted at people with parents, brothers, sisters or children, Jones said. "Pretty much everyone," Jones said. "It's about family." The story centers around a cross-country journey by DeNiro's character struggling to bring together his grown children for Christmas, several months after their mother's death.
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"Everybody's Fine" is targeted at "pretty much everyone," director Kirk Jones told CNN
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Story centers on a father's journey as he seeks to reunite his kids for the holidays
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Each stop reveals how his wife had sheltered him from bad news about his kids
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Jones, who also wrote the screenplay, traveled the U.S. for inspiration
@placeholder reveals a sensitive, aging father who imagines that "everybody's fine" -- a solace for his lonely suffering.