Plot
Frank Goode, a recently widowed retiree whose career was making telephone cables, is getting ready for his children to visit him, but they call to cancel at the last minute, so he decides to visit them instead.
Despite warnings from his doctor, Frank takes a train to New York City to see the first of his children, David, the artist, but he is not home. His next visit is to daughter Amy in Chicago, who lives in an impressive suburban home. The atmosphere is uncomfortable, and Amy tells him that it is a bad time to visit. So the next morning, Amy takes Frank to the train station, where he buys a ticket to visit his son Robert in Denver.
Frank arrives in Denver expecting to see Robert conducting the city's orchestra. It turns out that Robert is merely a percussionist. Robert also tells Frank that his visit is at a bad time, as the orchestra is flying to Europe the following day. So, within hours, Frank prepares to take a bus to Las Vegas to visit his daughter Rosie. After missing his bus, Frank catches a ride some of the way from a female truck driver. In the train station, during an encounter with a drug addict, Frank loses his medicine. He has a dream that David is in trouble.
In Las Vegas, Rosie meets Frank in a stretch limo. She tells him that she was in a big show that he cannot visit because it ended the previous week. She takes him to her apartment, where her friend Jilly brings her baby for babysitting. Frank learns that the apartment is actually not Rosie's. During dinner, Frank asks Rosie why his children never talked to him while they were so open with their mother. She reveals that he always expected too much of them, and that he was not a good listener.
Frank flies home but, without any pills, he has a heart attack. He has another dream of his kids as young children, and it reveals their secrets: Amy is separated from her husband, Robert lied about going to Europe, and Rosie is really bisexual, as well as the mother of Jilly's child. Frank awakens in the hospital, and he learns that David has died from an overdose. That night, Frank has another dream in which David appears, and Frank tries to come to terms with his relation to his children.
After recovering, Frank visits his wife's grave. He talks to her about pushing the kids too much and not trying to understand them more. He tells her that everybody is fine. Frank returns to New York and buys a painting by David—a landscape that shows telephone lines that are not connected.
At Christmas, the three remaining children are around the house helping to cook and decorate the tree. It is revealed that Rosie and Jilly are domestic partners and are raising the baby together. Frank finally walks into the dining room, and they eat their meal, with David's painting visible in the background.
Reception
Box office
The film "unspooled in 10th [place] with $4 million". [4] As of December 6, 2009, the film had grossed $4,027,000. It closed on December 24, 2009, after a brief three-week run. It ended up making $16,443,609 worldwide. [2]
Critical reaction
The film received mixed reviews from film critics. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 47%, based on reviews from 141 critics, with an average rating of 5.34/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "A calm, charismatic performance from Robert De Niro nearly saves the movie, but ultimately, Everybody's Fine has the look and feel of a stereotypical Christmas dramedy." [5] On Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score out of 100 to reviews from film critics, the film has a rating score of 47 based on 25 reviews, indicating "mixed or average" reviews. [6]
Michael Medved gave Everybody's Fine two stars out of four, calling the film "...bleak, deeply depressive, and utterly depressing..." But he also added that "DeNiro's acting is intense and moving as always". [7]
The critical consensus praises Robert De Niro for having "intensity and presence that shines through even when he's not playing Travis Bickle/Jake LaMotta types, "but the movie becomes overly sentimental, and the supporting players aren't given three-dimensional characters to play". [8]
