Film Reviews 
 
 Everybody's Fine -- Film Review 
 
 "Everybody's Fine" 
 
 Bottom Line: A thoroughly fake movie with trite characters that is about, of all things, the need for truthfulness. 
 
 There isn't much that's fine in "Everybody's Fine," an embarrassing misfire for Kirk Jones, who once gave us the exhilarating comedy "Waking Ned Devine," and Miramax, a storied company now reduced to little more than a film library. Despite a cloyingly sentimental story that rings false in every moment, the production did attract a substantial cast headed by Robert De Niro. It's not going to help, though, when Miramax releases the film Dec. 4.Sometimes a filmmaker and a project just don't make any sense, and "Fine" is a case in point. The film is ostensibly a remake of Giuseppe Tornatore's 1990 film "Stanno Tutti Bene." That bittersweet Italian dramedy has been totally Americanized, which is fine, only wouldn't you want an American director aboard to supervise? Jones, who is British and has never made an American film, not only is the director here, he is the writer. His shaky footing on American soil and with American culture is painfully evident.The movie glides along a surface of complete inauthenticity. Characters have no depth, and all emotions get ladled on via a syrupy score and De Niro's strenuous acting. It's a no-go almost from the start.De Niro plays Frank, a man who has been rough on his kids, demanding their success as payment for his hard work supporting them through their formative years. Now he wonders why no one in his scattered family wants to visit him after their mother died. She was always the buffer, but now she's gone.True to his fashion, he ignores his doctor's advice to take things easy because of a lung condition and hits the road, traveling by bus or train -- he hates airplanes -- to visit his two sons and two daughters unannounced. Apparently, sneak attacks are the best approach with this family.You can pretty much guess that when his wife told him the kids were just fine all those years, she wasn't being frank. Indeed, the first son he visits, a painter in New York, has disappeared.So he drops in on one of his daughters (Kate Beckinsale), who lives with her husband and son in a tony Chicago neighborhood. She can't wait to get rid of him, but it's clear -- like everything in this movie, perhaps too clear -- that something is seriously amiss.En route to visit a second son, the long-distance telephone wires buzz with the siblings' urgent calls that alert one another to Dad's sneak visits and let you know the New York son is in deep trouble in Mexico.The second son (Sam Rockwell) doesn't quite have the job Frank expected. Later, Drew Barrymore, the other daughter, seems happy as a dancer in Las Vegas shows, but signals are everywhere that this too is a false front.What Jones intends here is a puzzle: Everything is so utterly predictable and the false fronts so obvious, was he really counting on audiences being surprised? Or, more likely, does he mean for you to watch how De Niro reacts to an entire family basically lying to their dad?There is no web of complexity or societal mischief for the protagonist to penetrate. He merely observes a dance of deceit, responds politely, but when his health finally and inevitably breaks down, he is in a position to demand the truth.What he "learns" is what has been apparent from the start. He pushed too hard as a father and, to protect him against disappointment, his children put on a show and play the happy family.What a long way to go for such a banal payoff. And the route is made longer by characters and situations that are equal parts bland and extraneous. Henry Braham's cinematography and Andrew Jackness' production design create eye-catching landscapes across America for Frank to wander through, but they feel alarmingly empty. ||||| Robert De Niro plays a widowed retiree named Frank in Everybody's Fine. And although Frank's not supposed to be a very sophisticated man, it requires saintly moviegoing patience I clearly don't have to put up with his level of unworldliness. For one thing, he shows up at the doorsteps of his four adult children, who are scattered across America, without calling ahead, expecting each to be home. What, it would kill him to pick up a phone? The guy spent a working lifetime manufacturing the protective coating that insulates telephone wire, fer chrissakes. The contradiction counts as galumphing irony in this calculatedly soppy, seasonally phony Americanized remake of Giuseppe Tornatore's 1990 Stanno Tutti Bene  which was bittersweet in the Italian original with Marcello Mastroianni as the poignant papa. 
 
 Then there's this: Frank, who hasn't seen his brood since the death of their mother a few months earlier, travels from kid to kid (each son or daughter secretly unhappy, lying to their pop, and not fine at all in his or her own way) by bus and train, toting a sad rolling carry-on bag. Thing is, Frank is the only American born in the age of Samsonite who doesn't know that rolling bags actually roll, don't you know, on little wheels that work quite well when the collapsible handle is extended and pulled. So until one of his kids clues him in, he lifts, carries, and schleps like a grandpa from the old country. 
 
 Well. The sight of the world-famous Robert De Niro, a powerful actor revered for playing tough guys who can smash Samsonite with their bare hands, pretending not to know how to pull a handle is so embarrassing that the ick ought to obscure the rest of the movie's falsehoods. Yet, as written and directed by British director Kirk Jones (Waking Ned Devine) with guidance, apparently, from Dr. Phil, the movie introduces offspring who are correspondingly awful, including Kate Beckinsale as a tense, rich ad exec in Chicago, Sam Rockwell as a drippy musician in Denver, and Drew Barrymore as an alleged dancer in Las Vegas. As for the artist son in New York City, jeez, he's nowhere to be found. Naturally, poor shnooky Frank just waits like a lox on the stoop of the kid's scary, downtown-y, artisty, and vagranty tenement building. At least he might have spent the time more profitably learning how to get his wheels rolling. D 
 
 See all of this week's reviews ||||| © Jonathan Brady/PA Wire/Press Association Images 
 
 © PA Images / Ian West/PA Wire Sylvester Stallone with Arnold Schwarzenegger at The Expendables 2 premiere 
 
 © Jonathan Brady/PA Wire/Press Association Images 
 
 © Rex Features / Moviestore Collection Stallone and Carl Weathers's Apollo Creed in Rocky 
 
 The London Palladium welcomed a Hollywood legend last night (January 11) as Sylvester Stallone fielded questions from host Jonathan Ross and an enthusiastic audience for an entertaining 'Evening with...'.Number one box office hits across each of the last five decades show Stallone as a star with big screen endurance, but this weekend's West End appearance highlighted his skills as a raconteur. Spanning from his early student years in Switzerland right up to his forthcoming boxing return in Grudge Match, Sly took the audience from the highs of Rocky and Rambo to the lows of Rhinestone with charm, wit and charisma.He even treated the crowd to a great Robert De Niro impersonation, a Shakespeare recitation and sang 'Too Close to Paradise' (from his 1978 drama Paradise Alley) with Ross.rounds up 10 of the best bits from An Evening with Sylvester Stallone below..."The most iconic fictional character for me was a very good actor, nobody probably knows him anymore, Steve Reeves in the Hercules films. He was probably the most perfect male specimen I'd ever seen. He's the guy that got me interested. Then it was Kirk Douglas, what he was doing with The Vikings I thought was incredible, how he was deforming himself back then. That was really bold.""I was watching Mean Streets and Marty and all these different characters that I knew I could play. Then one night I saw a fight on TV with this guy Chuck Wepner against Muhammad Ali. He was being depicted as a bum. He knocked Ali down in the 14th, 15th round. I saw that and went, there's my story..."In everyone's life there's going to be about 3 or 4 crossroads and that's going to determine your course. I knew if we took the money I could have been very happy, no question. But I would've hated myself. They said we don't want you, we'll take you but they had about five clauses in there so they could fire me in the first week.""I abused power. I was an authority on everything. If you had a disease to cure I'd tell you. If you wanted the history of movies I'd tell you. I became insufferable, I look at some of my interviews now and I wish I could go back and punch myself in the face. The press turned against me..."I kind of made Rocky III autobiographical. I had become really egotistical, much more vain than I had been. That's what happened to Rocky. That's why you go down in flames, you're protected by agents and no one tells you the truth. It costs Rocky everything and he had to rebuild the eye of the tiger.""When I did First Blood I wanted him to play the Colonel. He said he'd be happy to be Colonel Trautman. On the set he comes down and says 'I can't do this script. We agreed on some changes.' I said we can't, but what are the changes?He said 'here's what they should be: don't take this the wrong way but at the very end of the movie I should kill you. And we see a cop car driving away and it disappears into the fog, a hand reaches up on the rearview mirror, we look up and see me wearing your head band.'""We just basically hated each other, but in a good way. You want to look for an adversary that makes you get up in the morning and give it all and leave nothing on the table. If the director says be there for 3 hours and it's a 15 hour day you go, 'Okay, if it's going to turn out better than [Arnold's movie]' We both agree... otherwise you don't push too hard. It's like two soccer rivals.""I didn't think I was mature enough for Coming Home, which eventually won Oscars for everybody. That would've been interesting considering I'd done Rambo, you would have seen both sides of the Vietnam War."I turned down Witness, which was great because I've never had a love affair with an Amish chick! The third thing was Rhinestone or Romancing the Stone and I don't have to remind you which one I picked!""I was at a point where the criticism was starting to bother me because I started in the industry as a serious actor. People forget that in Rocky there was only six minutes of boxing in it, the rest was talking."Jim Mangold had written a brilliant script, I basically put up my salary to fund the movie because I wanted to just prove a point."I wanted to work with really good actors and just see how you hold up against them; Bobby De Niro, Harvey Keitel, Ray Liotta, Robert Patrick. It served a purpose, I wish it had been more successful but it's just something I'm really glad I did because it made me realize what I wanted to do in the future. This is the direction I feel like doing now, there's not much more I can do in action except explode!""I know that it's not going to work unless it's a different thing, unless there's a hook to it. Like what they do with Sherlock Holmes, for example. I can't do that, there are too many Poe scholars that would go berserk if you tamper with it."Actors, artists, they have two faces - the public face and the private face... He's a young goofy artist so I tried to write him as one of us, who happened to have this amazing ability. I'm still debating whether I should do it but I know in my heart of hearts that ship has sailed.""It's very interesting because people think it's Rocky VII, it's not, I have a supporting role. It's great to be able to take that character, who's not well, and he's trying to pass on all his love and knowledge while he still has time. I think it can be a very interesting challenge.""Now that I look back I really think that I'm proud to have been able to have played one character like a Rocky and have it still be important to people. And then Rambo, the darkest and complete opposite in negative light. I talk about this with De Niro, in Grudge Match we're in the ring together and I say, 'those Oscars aren't going to help you at all'..."I know that I wasn't brave enough. He was much more of a fearless actor early on. I'm doing Rocky and the next theatre over it's Taxi Driver - he was there with the mohawk, bloody nose, that took some guts to do. I really admire that he just wants to keep going. It was great working with Bobby because he's the complete antithesis of who I am. He's modest, he's quiet, he's reserved and I learned a lot from him."
– Critics are divided on Everybody’s Fine: Some think the family drama is okay because of Robert De Niro, and others think it’s awful despite him. What they’re saying: It’s “a thoroughly fake movie that is about, of all things, the need for truthfulness,” writes Kirk Honeycutt of the Hollywood Reporter. “Characters have no depth, and all emotions get ladled on via a syrupy score and De Niro's strenuous acting.” Rooting for these characters “requires saintly moviegoing patience I clearly don't have,” says Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly, adding that the script was written “under guidance, apparently, from Dr. Phil.” De Niro is “very good,” says Bill Goodykoontz of the Arizona Republic, but the film doesn’t trust its audience, and the ending is “pure sap.” It “may well be fine, but it could have been a lot better.” You may feel as if you’ve “been run over by the pathos van,” because the movie borders on “emotional fraud.” But it’s such a relief to see De Niro "in a project that does not stink” that Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune liked it anyway.