Dir. Kirk Jones, US/Italy , 2009, 99 mins

Cast:  Robert De Niro, Sam Rockwell, Kate Beckinsale, Drew Barrymore

Review by Carol Allen

**Warning Possible Spoilers**

This is both a road movie and also a family film, in the sense that it is about the concept of family.   Based on the Italian move Stanno tutti bene( 1990), this American remake could have wallowed in sentimentality, but thanks to De Niro and the actors playing his children, there is a lot to enjoy.  

De Niro plays Frank, a widower living alone since the death of his wife.  His four  children are grown up, have their own lives and are living all over America.   When one by one they cancel on a proposed family reunion barbecue, Frank decides to set off round the country and surprise them all with a visit.  

The opening scenes skilfully introduce us to Frank's life and the theme of the film.   We see Frank alone in his house, then shopping and getting everything ready for the planned barbecue, in the course of which we are also introduced to his adult children via photographs and their phone messages giving their excuses for not making the  reunion weekend.  The detail of the house itself tells us a lot about Frank in terms of its décor, furniture and the somewhat ghastly fountain in the backyard of a little boy peeing.  This is the home of a working class man, who's worked hard all his life to provide for his family.  The house is also remarkably clean and tidy for a man living along - another expression of Frank's character.   

We then move into a classic road movie format with this imperfect but engaging human being at the centre.   De Niro is very convincing.  At first we wonder why his children are being so unapproachable.  He seems such a friendly and rather affable old guy, until we realise there's rather more to the situation than just young adults being too busy with their lives to pay him any attention.  He is revealed from their point of view as a loving father, who has alienated his children by his too high expectations and we become very aware of the unseen personality of his late wife, who held the family together.  She was the one in whom the children confided their problems and their dreams and she would just tell her husband "Everybody's fine".   There is question mark about what has happened to the elder son David, an artist, who has disappeared from his New York apartment and is somewhere in Mexico.   Frank's children, we realise, know and they are trying to keep it from Frank.  It's a mystery which keeps us interested and helps the story move along at a good pace.  

There are good performances too from Beckinsale , Rockwell and Barrymore as the other children and an impressive one from Lucian Maisel as Beckinsale's teenage son.  A medical crisis looming for Frank is signalled early in the film, when he defies his doctor's advice not to do the trip and then later loses his medication to a mugger, but the crisis when it comes and the dream he has while unconscious about his children as kids, which reveals to him what is really going on in their relationships, is dramatically very effective

Frank used to earned his crust, we discover, installing the overhead telephone lines,  which connect people across the country.   It's a metaphor for the breakdown of communication with his children, which is hammered home in a  somewhat heavy handed way.   It is also frustrating that we see so little of grown up David, the mystery son.   And having avoided sentimentality throughout, the film's ending disappointingly descends into a cosy reassurance  that Frank has learned his lesson and family affections and values have been restored.   Everybody and everything is fine and just as it should be.   But though the destination is a touch disappointing, the journey of the film itself is well worth the trip.