Now on DVD: Everybody's Fine

Everybody's Fine starring Robert De Niro, Drew Barrymore, Sam Rockwell, and Kate Beckinsale is about a family struggling to stay together after their mother dies and their father is left alone. Robert De Niro plays the patriarch of the family who was a typical 1960s father who focused on his career in order to make money for the family of six. His wife held the connection to their four children and the family's confidante. However, when she dies, De Niro is lost and tries to rekindle his relationship with his children. When he plans a family gathering, all of the children find a way to get out of the reunion. De Niro is distraught that his family is no longer connected as they once were and he decides to take to the road to visit each of his children. His first stop is to his son David who is an artist living in New York City. When David does not answer his father's calls, De Niro decides to move on to his daughter's house where he finds that nothing is as it seems and certainly not as hunky-dory as he had been told. He faces the same situation with his following two children before he returns home even more lost than when he left. Each child blows off their father to the point that he believes they may never be a strong family again. Yet, when tragedy strikes, his children come together to support each other and himself.

This film was touching in all of the ways a good movie should be. It never received any hype when it was in theaters and moved quickly to DVD. I think that this is terrible because I found a great deal more in the film than I found in many of the other movies that came out in 2009. De Niro is fantastic in the role as the lost father helplessly trying to bring his family together. His children's disinterest in him is honest and heartbreaking. It made me want to call my dad and thank him for being a fantastic father. Though the story was heart aching at times, it was truthful and documented a real period in people's lives when children become parents and distance themselves from their own parents for a variety of reasons. Overall, the film is sad and touching with little bits of humor. Hopefully, its DVD release will inspire the public to give it its due.

-DLP