"Everybody's Fine"

When children grow up and leave their parents' homes, it's almost never an easy transition. Nor does it get much easier as the years pass and the kids build their own lives, careers and households. In case you weren't already aware of this particular fact of life, it's spelled out in great detail in "Everybody's Fine." The story is adapted from director Giuseppe Tornatore's 1990 Italian drama, although it might just as easily have been inspired by Harry Chapin's 1974 chart-topping tearjerker "Cat's in the Cradle."

Writer/director Kirk Jones examines the Goode family -- and if you think that last name isn't going to turn out to be ironic, you've got another thing coming -- in which widowed patriarch Frank (Robert DeNiro) spends much of his time in sentimental solitude. Frank's lofty dream: to get his two daughters and two sons under the same roof for a reunion. Unfortunately, since his offspring have sprung off all over the country, that is no easy task. David lives the bohemian life in New York City, Amy is a strictly-business ad executive in Chicago, Robert toils as a musician in St. Louis and Rose has achieved her dream of being a dancer in Las Vegas. Everyone's a success and everything's fine.

Or is it?

When he can't corral the kids into his own now-empty house, Frank embarks on a cross-country odyssey to call on each one of them. Despite warnings from his doctor that travel is a bad idea, Frank (who is suffering from lung disease) hops on a train to the Big Apple anyway. He may well have boarded the Heartbreak Express: Nothing goes as planned, least of all his encounters with Amy, Robert and Rose.

The screenplay does a nice job of communicating the polite uneasiness that sometimes cloaks conversations with family members. "I tell you the good news and spare you the bad," Amy (Kate Beckinsale) tells Frank in a rare moment of frankness. Robert (Sam Rockwell) and Rose (Drew Barrymore) use similar tactics.

Unfortunately, once the movie has established its core concept -- the kids are all keeping up appearances to keep Dad happy -- it has nowhere else to go. Jones' dialogue is generally more believable than the storyline, which is essentially four mild variations on the same theme. The only episode that actually registers is Frank's visit with Robert, who still carries a few decades-old grudges about Frank's high-pressure child-rearing tactics. There's a little electricity in the interplay between Rockwell and DeNiro that is sadly absent in the rest of the film.

DeNiro plays Frank with a gentle low-key charm that's refreshing to see. Beckinsale and Barrymore are each burdened with unconvincing characters and semi-silly situations. In case someone out there doesn't pick up on the conspicuous clues Jones drops that Amy, Robert and Rose are not the shining successes they claim to be, the movie includes a painfully clunky dream sequence in which Frank analyzes everything he has seen and exposes all the unpleasantries they've hoped to hide.

Perhaps the truth will set them all free, but it doesn't make the film any more credible. The phrase "I'll come visit as soon as I can" is repeated throughout "Everybody's Fine" and, like those reassuring words, the movie is well-intentioned but ultimately unconvincing.