everybody's fine

Article first published as Blu-ray Review: Everybody's Fine on Blogcritics.

Based on the Italian film Stanno tutti bene, 2009's Everybody's Fine, a thoughtful family drama starring Robert De Niro, follows widower Frank Goode in his quest to reconnect with his grown children. When all four cancel on a trip home to visit their father, Frank decides to take a road trip and visit each of them on their own turf. Because of his pulmonary fibrosis, air travel is out, so Frank takes buses and other ground transportation to get where he needs to go.

No planes, but trains, buses, and automobiles help get De Niro on his way.

In New York City he can't find his son David, an artist, so he moves on to Chicago, where his daughter Amy (Kate Beckinsale) lives with her family. She seems more than a little hesitant to spend time with him. Something is awry, but he can't put his finger on what exactly is wrong. With each successive visit he discovers that his kids all have something to conceal. In Denver, his son Robert is part of an orchestra, but not the conductor he told his father about, but as a drummer. His daughter Rosie (Drew Barrymore), a dancer who lives in Las Vegas, seems to be the only one genuinely happy to see him, but even she seems to be keeping a secret from him.

Frank must face the fact that his children may have told their mother about their lives but they don't seem to know how, or even want, to communicate with him. And where is David? As the film progresses, Frank and the viewer will be able to unravel most of the family's secrets. The real mystery remains — will Frank ever be able to get closer to his kids?

De Niro is great as the aging patriarch who the more he tries to get closer to his family the farther he gets pushed away. Everybody's far from fine in this introspective film, but fans of De Niro will enjoy watching him play a role that is such a departure from his usual shoot first, ask questions later tough guys.

Everybody's Fine looks fantastic on a large-scale high-definition television screen, with an aspect ratio of 1.85:1. The Blu-ray has a running time of approximately 100 minutes. Extras include some deleted and extended scenes and a "making of" video for Paul McCartney's Golden Globe-nominated song, "(I Want to) Come Home." The widescreen Blu-ray has DTS surround sound, with crisp-sounding dialogue, and subtitles available in English, French, and Spanish.

50 first dates

I recently saw for the first time the movie 50 First Dates with Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore. Sandler may be the recipient of the most Razzies ever bestowed upon a performer, but over the past few years I have had to admit that I can't help liking him and his movies. Did I say that out loud?

In 50 First Dates Henry (Sandler) lives the Life of Riley in Hawaii. A marine-life vet, his main hobby is to date and leave a series of women that he meets on the island. But his womanizing ways soon become a thing of the past after he meets Lucy (Barrymore) one morning at a local café. They have instant chemistry and plan to meet the next day, but when Henry shows up Lucy doesn't remember meeting him. Lucy's friends at the café fill him in — A year earlier Lucy was involved in a car accident that has affected her memory. She has an odd form of amnesia in which she forgets everything that has happened in a 24-hour period.

Learning that she was in an accident and her loss of memory each morning was too painful to experience (and re-experience), so her father Marlin (Blake Clark) and brother Doug (Sean Astin) re-enact the activities of that day, which also happened to be her father's birthday, every day, in an effort to protect her.

Drew Barrymore and Adam Sandler meet cute

Rob Schneider and Sandler meet not so cute

Sandler's usual silliness is in full evidence, mainly in the characters of Doug, an aspiring bodybuilder who lisps as a result of steroid abuse, and Rob Schnieder as Ula, Henry's goofy assistant. But 50 First Dates also has a serious side. Lucy's problem does not have an easy sitcom-pat solution. Henry truly loves her, and believes that it would be better for her and her family if they didn't keep lying to her. He must come up with some creative ways to help her remember him and what happened to her. Visuals come in handy, as Lucy paints and draws and Henry helps her create a notebook and makes videotapes to help tell (and re-tell) their story.

Having a mother with dementia probably caused me to have a deeper reading of 50 First Dates. Henry and Lucy get a fresh start each day, but Henry must be the custodian of their past. It also made me realize that even if many things are forgotten, there is still a lot to be enjoyed in the moment. 50 First Dates may not be a typical romantic comedy, but it is certainly an entertaining one, and full of feeling.

big miracle

From the previews, the movie Big Miracle looked to be pretty predictable fare. Drew Barrymore and John Krasinski team up to save some whales. In a sense, that is exactly what happens, but director Ken Kwapis manages to take the "based on a true story" traditional format and look at the story from a few different angles to come up with a fresh and entertaining film.

Based on the 1989 book Freeing the Whales by Tom Rose, Big Miracle reminds audiences of a story that was touching hearts across the country, and eventually the world, in 1988. Three gray whales became trapped beneath the ice near Point Barrow, Alaska. After local reporters' news coverage went national, Operation Breakthrough was created, combining the efforts of the local Inuit community, and the U.S. and Russian governments.

The whales have just a relatively small whole to breathe through the ice

Rachel (Drew Barrymore) gets to know the whales

Malik (John Pingayak) shows Nathan (Ahmaogak Sweeney) how to listen to the whales

In the first few minutes of Big Miracle I settled down to watch the stereotypes roll by. And there are a few. Drew Barrymore plays Rachel Kramer, a Greenpeace activist, the obvious do-gooder heroine. The wise local elder, Malik (John Pingayak), who seems to have a mystical connection with nature. Jill Jerard (Kristen Bell), an overly ambitious reporter who will do anything to get a story. But then the characters are allowed to show other sides to their personalities.

Rachel fights for animals in peril, and although her cause is just, she is shrill, abrasive and does not encourage cooperation. It's an interesting choice to make the hero of the piece such a prickly difficult person whose personality almost drowns out all the good she is trying to accomplish. We completely understand why reporter Adam Carlson (Krasinski) is her ex-boyfriend. He likes her and respects her, but she is definitely difficult to spend a lot of time with. By the end of the movie we end up liking her too, which says a lot about Barrymore's abilities as an actress. she never tries to charm us. She stays true to who she is, and like a lot of difficult people, she is still worthwhile getting to know a little better.

Ambitious reporter Jill catches Adam's eye (Kristen Bell). she represents a whole world beyond Alaska for him, and the story represents a real chance to move up in a business ruled by men for her. Jill's struggles with being treated like anything other than "Reporter Barbie" take her character beyond the villain or other side of the romantic triangle that other films would have relegated her to. Malik represents another way of life — the Inuit are actually whale hunters — but his character can see both sides, what is best for his people and what is best for the three creatures trapped beneath the ice, and it is he who initiates using chainsaws to cut a path for the whales to follow to the sea when it looks like the National Guard will not be there in time.

Dermot Mulroney plays a by-the-book National Guardsman charged with trying to tow an icebreaker to Barrow. He starts a flirtation with an aide from the Reagan administration (Vinessa Shaw) who believes a rescue will help the image of the outgoing (Reagan) administration. What a Hollywood movie cliché, right? But then we are greeted by wedding pictures of the real couple over the closing credits. Big Miracle weaves in real footage to keep reminding us that this all really happened.

Also on hand are Ted Danson plays an oilman who comes to create some positive P.R. and leaves as a lover of whales, thanks to the subtle maneuvering of his wildlife-loving wife (Kathy Baker), as well as many more familiar faces — Tim Blake Nelson, Stephen Root, James LeGros, Shea Whigham. Some of the characters are so deftly drawn that it is easy to forget that they do not all have a real-life counterpart, like Malik's grandson Nathan, a young Inupiat boy (Ahmaogak Sweeney) who dreams of leaving Alaska for the "lower 48." Kwapis has the audience invested in this frozen part of the world and its people that by the end of the movie we want to find out what happens to Nathan in the future.

Big Miracle does serve up a Barrymore/Krasinski romance to fulfill its the Hollywood movie requirements, but that is the least interesting aspect of the movie. Their characters are interesting as individuals. Whether they couple up or not is irrelevant. But what they teamed up to do in 1988 for a trio of whales is important. The ultimate "save the whales" event that may have helped to forever shift national popular perspective about wildlife.

Related articles

• Drew Barrymore Happy 'Big Miracle' Used Puppet Whales (ecorazzi.com)

it's hard getting old — about schmidt and everybody's fine

I recently watched two very similarly-themed movies that feature older, recently widowed men and their tenuous attachments to their families, About Schmidt and Everybody's Fine. Both feature great actors getting to play something very rare in Hollywood movies — their age.

In About Schmidt, from 2002, Jack Nicholson is wonderful as Warren Schmidt, a man who has kept life at a distance. As the movie opens he is retiring from a job as an insurance actuary. The opening shots of Omaha's Woodmen of the World building, where Schmidt worked, are fantastic and set the tone for this "life viewed from a distance" film. Schmidt himself has lived most of his life at a distance, void of emotion.  He may or may not have liked his job, but he has certainly spent most of his time involved with it rather than his wife and daughter. A few days into his retirement he is already bored and resenting all of his wife's routines and tics. But almost as soon as he starts to catalogue her faults, she dies, suddenly. His daughter Jeannie, played by Hope Davis, comes for the funeral, but she clearly doesn't care much for him and can't wait to get back to her life in Denver and planning her upcoming wedding.

Awkward airport goodbyes, L-R: Dermot Mulroney, Hope Davis and Jack Nicholson

Schmidt isn't sure what it's all about anymore.

Schmidt, "I know we're all pretty small in the big scheme of things, and I suppose the most you can hope for is to make some kind of difference, but what kind of difference have I made? What in the world is better because of me?"

Schmidt decides to sponsor a child from Tanzania, Ndugu, and the film includes voiceover narration of his informative and inappropriate letters to the young boy. As he tells Ndugu, Schmidt strongly disapproves of Jeannie's fiance, waterbed salesman Randall (Dermot Mulroney). But she won't listen  to him and has no desire to come home to Omaha and take care of him. Scenes of Schmidt rambling around his house and life after his wife has died couldn't help but remind me of my dad after my parents' divorce. Whether he was happy in his marriage or not, Schmidt clearly feels rudderless without his wife around.

Kathy Bates is hysterical as Randall's randy mom, Roberta.

In the hot tub with Kathy Bates

Roberta, "You already know how famously they get along as friends, but did you know that their sex life is positively white hot? The main reason both of my marriages failed was sexual. I'm an extremely sexual person, I can't help it, it just how I'm wired, you know, even when I was a little girl. I had my first orgasm when I was six in ballet class. Anyway, the point is that I have been always very easily aroused and very orgasmic, Jeannie and I have a lot in common that way. Clifford and Larry, they were nice guys, but they just could not keep up with me. Anyway, I don't want to betray Jeannie's confidence, but let me just assure you that whatever problems those two kids may run into along the way, they will always be able to count on what happens between the sheets to keep them together. More soup?" 

Schmidt, "Eh... no, I think I'm fine now."

And Nicholson is fine as Schmidt. The camera spends a lot of time on his face, and we get to suffer along with him as he travels the open road, trying to connect with his daughter, with life.

Robert De Niro takes a road trip to visit his kids

Robert De Niro plays a similar character, Frank Goode, in Everybody's Fine, which came out in 2009. It's a remake of an Italian film, Giuseppe Tornatore's Stanno Tutti Bene, which I haven't seen. Frank has four children, and none of them want to visit him after their mother dies. One by one, he tries to pay each a visit, some interactions more successful than others. Frank realizes that his kids were able to tell his wife anything, and that now it is easier for them to lie to him. Three of the grown kids, Robert (Sam Rockwell), Rosie (Drew Barrymore), and Amy (Kate Beckinsale) are equal parts suspicious of his motives and grief-stricken. Each has some substantial issues or secrets to work out with their father, but they aren't as disconnected from Frank as Schmidt's daughter Jeannie is in About Schmidt.

Rosie, "We could just talk to mom."
Frank, "Oh, but you couldn't just talk to me?"
Rosie, "Well she was a good listener, you were a good talker."
Frank, "Well so that's good, we made a good team."

De Niro and Drew Barrymore

Everybody's Fine doesn't strike as deep a chord as About Schmidt does, but it is still a nice little film. There is some added drama, as De Niro's Frank has a heart condition and spends most of the movie without some of his necessary medicine, but viewers only have to look to the title to be reassured of the outcome.

As much as aging is depicted as difficult — it's always hard to be on the other side of youth and promise — both men in these films are doing the best they can and are trying to live their lives with dignity. Both films are ultimately uplifting, and definitely worth a look.

kinda reminds me of...

In the past I have been told that I have reminded (different) folks of Emma Thompson, Glenne Headly, and even Drew Barrymore.

Any movie stars or public figures that you can call your doppelgänger?

I love these ladies most of the time, too - Emma in anything, Drew was fun in Music and Lyrics and Grey Gardens, and Glenne was in one of my all-time favorites, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.