Movie Review: Everybody's Fine

When I added this movie to the Netflix queue, I assumed it was another lightweight movie that was made with the intent of removing the viewer from their real life for 90 minutes (kind of like Steve Martin's Father of the Bride movie) but in fact, this movie really disturbed me 30 minutes into it.

Robert De Niro plays a man whose wife dies 8 months before and he's trying to gather his 4 grown kids who live scattered across the country together back at the house. For a variety of reasons (which all turn out to be lies), they cancel so he goes around the country surprising them with visits. He learns that all those years when the kids call home and talk to their mother, his wife has not been telling him the truth about what is going on in each kid's life. The part about calling home and saying 'Hi Dad. Is Mom there?' really hit home because that's what we did when we moved out. He eventually asks his one daughter (played by Drew Barrymore) why they didn't want to talk to him. She tells him that mom was a good listener and he was better at talking and putting pressure on them to do and be better and they didn't want to disappoint him.

I was thinking of my dad throughout this movie. He was much the same way. He was a little 'old school' in his belief about majors in college. You better have a good answer when he asks you what you will do with something like a sociology degree after college if you want to change your major to something like that. I know when I knew I was going to have a bad grade on a report card, I would rather have my mom break the news to him than myself. Not so much because of his reaction (well, maybe a little bit) but for the disappointment.

The timing of seeing this movie is also interesting. Just yesterday, my brothers and I had a few email exchanges in which they mentioned about all those mornings being driven to high school (we were lucky to get rides in the a.m. on his way into work but not so lucky on the way home which was usually the school bus) when he wouldn't say anything other than when you arrived at the school and you got out and he said 'Bye' or 'Have a good day'. I couldn't believe that my older brother was actually complaining about this. I replied by saying something to the effect of who wants to hear blathering that early in the a.m.? I never minded those quiet rides or waking up and going out to sit in the darkened living room as he listened to a popular local AM radio station (to which I still can hum the DJ's theme song as well as remember the horrid song sung by Sammy Davis Jr. as a tribute to Detroit), drank his coffee and never really speaking then either (although we were both probably dozing in our chairs until the telltale music came on that it was time to get ready). I would always choose 'companionable silence' over small talk any day. Obviously my older brother didn't find that silence to be so companionable.

As with most movies like this, it did end on a rather happy note and it also made me wonder at what kind of relationship I would have had with my dad if my mom had died first. We may have never talked much, but I don't feel there was anything left unresolved. He was who he was. I just wish I had talked to him when I called sometimes.


If you too would like to have Sammy Davis Jr.'s 'Hello Detroit' in your head too, here it is in all it's late 1970's finest: