Everybody's Fine DVD Review
Posted by Jeremy Thomas on 02.23.2010
Everybody may be fine in Robert De Niro's family drama, but is the DVD itself?
Directed by: Kirk Jones Written by: Kirk Jones
Starring: Robert De Niro - Frank Goode Drew Barrymore - Rosie Goode Kate Beckinsale - Amy Goode Sam Rockwell - Robert Goode Katherine Moennig - Jilly Melissa Leo - Colleen Lucian Maisel - Jack Damian Young - Jeff Austin Lysy - David
DVD Release Date: 2/23/2010 Running Time: 99 minutes
Rated PG-13 for thematic elements and brief strong language.
Robert De Niro is considered to be one of the finest living actors of his generation. A multiple-time Oscar nominee and winner, the Tribeca-born actor built his career giving top-notch performances as tough guys in films like Mean Streets, The Godfather Part II, Taxi Driver, Goodfellas, Raging Bull, Deer Hunter and Heat. That persona has followed him throughout his career, as well as his affinity for and skill at mob roles. What can sometimes be lost in that well-earned and fantastic reputation is that De Niro is a very versatile actor as well. He has shed that tough guy image in films like Stardust where he played a cross-dressing sky pirate, What Just Happened as a weary film producer, the romantic drama Falling in Love opposite Meryl Streep and The King of Comedy with Jerry Lewis. Despite these roles he has always seemed had trouble shedding the perception of his typecast persona, a fact that becomes problematic as he grows older.
The latest attempt for him to buck that image is Everybody's Fine. Directed by Kirk Jones, the family drama co-starred Kate Beckinsale, Drew Barrymore and Sam Rockwell, and was released in December of last year. Unfortunately for the film it got lost in the holiday season, which was packed with huge-budget hits and a host of films connecting with older audiences like The Blind Side and It's Complicated. It ended up as a box office failure, bringing in only $9 million domestically on a $21 million budget. Now, a relatively short three months after, Disney is releasing it on DVD under the Miramax name it was distributed under, in the hopes that audiences who are burned out on Oscar films will be willing to give this one a second try.
The Movie
The film stars De Niro as Frank Goode, a retiree living in the Northeastern United States. Frank is recently widowed and in poor health, having lung fibrosis as a result of a career spent making PVC-covered telephone cables, and his four children live far away from him. When a planned visit from the four falls completely through, Frank goes against his doctor's warning and decides to travel across the country to visit each of them in turn. A trip to visit his son David (Lysy) in New York City doesn't go as planned, nor do his arrivals in Chicago to visit ad agency owner Amy (Beckinsale), Denver for his musician son Robert (Rockwell) or Las Vegas for dancing daughter Rosie (Barrymore). It becomes evident to Frank that his children hide their problems from him, fearing disappointment based on how hard he pushed them to be successful when they were growing up. As this fact becomes more and more evident, Frank struggles to come to terms during train and bus rides with the fact that his tough-love parenting may have been the very thing that has now pushed them away without his wife to act as a buffer.
Everybody's Fine is a remake of Stanno tutti bene (which approximately, translates into the remake's title), an Italian drama written and directed by Giuseppe Tornatore (Cinema Paradiso). In adapting the original story, writer-director Kirk Jones decided to make a few changes that probably work best for American audiences. The father character is changed from a bureaucrat to a more blue-collar position and the children cut from five to four, among other things. The story is made a bit cleaner by this and easier to digest, and Jones does a very good job of crafting the story. It plays out with some surface similarities to Sam Mendes's Away We Go from last year, in that the lead character—albeit singular in this case—travels across the country with a goal in mind and learns some surprising and important lessons along the way. Jones's film is far less comically oriented, although there are some good moments of humor in the dialogue. Instead the film's themes are much more somber and reflective.
The script is very relatable, particularly to those who fit the age of the children or of Frank. In the breakneck speed of today's world, it's very easy to get so wrapped up in life that one forgets the bonds of family, and this is a loss keenly felt in this movie, both by Frank and his children. The dialogue could easily go over the top or try to hammer the point home, but it is instead understated for the most part. The opening acts set things up very well and take their time in revealing the uncomfortable truths Frank is going to discover, putting us right there in his shoes with just enough foreknowledge to know that bad things are afoot. Frank isn't an idiot and he sees that there are problems, but he doesn't know the depth of it and neither do we until things truly reach a head in the third act.
As a director, Jones's skill is also displayed very nicely here. There are little things that he does that work out exceptionally well—when Frank sees his children for the first time in the movie, he sees them as the young children he remembers instead of the adults that they are. This is done very nicely by Jones, and the young actors legitimately look like they could be their adult counterparts as children. Frank, like many parents, has trouble seeing his children as adults in their own right and Jones's decisions here carry off quite nicely. There are occasional steps where he falters—a third act dream sequence isn't bad, but approaches hints of overdoing it by the loss of some subtlety and the necessity of revealing potentially ugly truths to him. The hour and forty minute running time also does not allow for enough character building of the children, but the story is primarily that of Frank's so this is only a minor trouble. Still, it may have benefitted the story some for us to get a more developed approach to the characters.
One of the best things about the movie is the performances. Robert De Niro's accolades and reputation are nearly unassailable, even with duds like Righteous Kill, Hide and Seek and Godsend dotting his recent years. He has done drama, action, thrillers and comedy, and shined in all of them. Still, the actor has always been known for his tough guy persona, the mob guy, boxer and villain roles for which he has won the most awards and critical acclaim. His turn as Frank is a very different kind of role. This is a man who lived an honest life, worked hard and tried to provide for his children, but left his mark on them in both good and very bad ways. It is a surprisingly complex role that De Niro handles with the utmost skill. He's a good man who's intentions don’t turn out the way he intended, including one scene where he tries to be generous to a vagrant in a train station and pays for it. De Niro's critical love may have slid in recent years but this is the kind of role that shows how versatile and skilled he is, and it is another fine performance from the man.
The supporting work is all good as well, though the actors have much less to work with. Kate Beckinsale, Sam Rockwell and Drew Barrymore are very good as Frank's children, trying their hardest to make him believe everything is fine and hiding the ugly parts of their lives. Melissa Leo, an Oscar nominee last year for her work in Frozen River, shows up in a brief scene as a friendly trucker and makes the role more memorable than it deserves to be. Katherine Moennig is fine as Rosie's friend Jilly, and Damian Young is also good in his small role as Amy's son. Of the child versions of Frank's children Chandler Franz gets the most screen time, and does a fine job as the young David. There are no real missteps here by the actors and this is a film that can all be proud of in their performances. This is a film that is full of sentimentality without being manipulative, and the actors and Jones work together quite nicely in making a film full of feeling and also very thought-provoking, in smaller and more personal ways.
Film Rating: 8.5
The Video
The video transfer for Everybody's Fine, presented in a 2.40:1 widescreen ratio, works for what the film needs. It isn't a perfect transfer and sometimes the image seems a little bit soft, but it never gets to a point of being distracting. Color saturation is strong and blacks are clearly defined; the scenic shots out the window and otherwise as Frank travels across the country are very impressive thanks to the efforts of cinematographer Henry Braham. The digital camera work may not carry over quite as well as a more traditional film stock would have for a low-key drama such as this, and it likely accounts for the occasional bits of clarity softness. Still, for what this film requires it is just fine.
Video Rating: 7.0
The Audio
The standard 5.1 Dolby Surround track is presented here in English, and it sounds good. This is not a film with lots of audio flourishes, so the track keeps it simple and that works to the film's benefit. Dialogue is leveled nicely with the ambient sounds and Dario Marianelli's score; the viewer should never have to stretch to understand what's being said the way that they might on lower-quality audio tracks. Most of the sound is focused on the front channels, with the side reserved for the sounds of the city or the train. In staying straightforward and low-key, Miramax proves that occasionally less is more. A French language track is included as well and subtitles are available in English, French and Spanish.
Audio Rating: 8.0
The Packaging
The just-closed Miramax Studios released Everybody's Fine and if you didn't know that, a quick glance at any part of the packaging would easily tell you. The DVD snap case has a cropped version of the unfortunate movie poster, with "A Miramax Films Release" conspicuously across the top. The DVD itself is has that credit listed amidst the title on a standard gray-on-silver title motif. The DVD menu is fairly average, with still shots of particular cast members amidst snippets of the score. Menu options are straight-forward and easy to navigate. The result feels as if Disney is trying to push the studio they just closed down so as to attract people to the prestige of the name, but the overall packaging seems a bit lazy.
Packaging Rating: 5.0
Special Features
Previews: (8:34) These play before the main menu and are selectable from the main menu as well. We get trailers for the upcoming Nicholas Sparks adaptation The Last Song starring Miley Cyrus and Greg Kinnear, as well as the Oceans, the Disney companion-to-be for Earth. There's also a trailer for the terrible When in Rome, already being advertised for DVD & Blu-Ray despite a release just at the end of last month, a DVD trailer for Old Dogs, one for Army Wives Season Three and a general one for Blu-Ray DVD.
The Making of Paul McCartney's "(I Want To) Come Home": (9:47) This is a featurette about the making of the song that plays over the end credits. It features McCartney talking about how he was contacted and agreed to do it, along with a nice anecdote about watching the film for the first time and seeing that they had included "Let it Be" as sung by Aretha Franklin as a placeholder where his song would be. McCartney talks a little about his songwriting process and how he conceptualized the song. He talks about identifying with the character of Frank and how he worked with the director as well as composer Dario Marianelli in working up the song. It's a nice little interview set with McCartney and provides some insight into the song-writing and performing process, even if there are no details on the film itself.
Deleted & Extended Scenes: (11:49) There are seven scenes here that were excised or shortened from the film, presented without commentary and in work print form. The first is a bit of conversation Frank has with a guy on a train platform about their fathers, which provides a bit of insight into why Frank dealt with his kids the way he did. The second is an extended version of Frank's first flashback/conversation with David, where it's more explicit that he's not just remembering but imagining them today as if they were still kids. There's a longer version of the scene in the diner with the old man, a couple brief deleted scenes on buses where Frank talks to fellow passengers and one of Frank sitting in the airport terminal out of Las Vegas. The last is an extended scene of Frank and David's conversation at the hospital that goes a bit further after David departs. Some of these work very well and would have fit nicely in the film, particularly the first and the extended scenes; the last is particularly good. The deleted scenes with the passengers are easy to see why they were cut though.
Special Features Rating: 4.0
The 411: In Everybody's Fine, it's clear that the characters are in no way "fine." However, Kirk Jones's remake of the Giuseppe Tornatore's 1990 film is better than fine. Jones paints the supporting characters in somewhat broader strokes and focuses the story on Robert De Niro's Frank, making him a sympathetic man who nonetheless has had his faults and must come to terms with how he affected his family by way of them. De Niro's performance as Frank is top-notch and the supporting cast makes the most out of all of their roles as well. The story is easy to relate to and while the film is a definite heart-string puller, it never does so manipulatively and earns every bit of emotion it inspires. A few clunky dream sequences dent the final product just a bit but by no means do they break it. This is an excellent film about family and reflecting on one's past, well worth watching. The video transfer is adequate and the audio track is very nice; only a lack of quality special features makes this anything less than a strong recommendation.
