Frank Goode, a recently widowed retiree, used to work making telephone cables. He is getting ready for his children to come visit him, but they call to cancel on him at the last minute. He decides to visit them instead.
Despite warnings from his doctor, Frank takes a train to New York City, to see the first of his children, David, the artist. But he is not home. His next visit is to daughter Amy in Chicago, who lives in an impressive suburban home. The atmosphere is uncomfortable and Amy tells him it is a bad time to visit. So the next morning, Amy takes Frank to the station to take the train to his son Robert in Denver.
As Frank travels to each of his children's homes, the film cuts to phone conversations (over the wires he made) between the siblings, even though Frank is adamant that each visit be a surprise. We hear that David is in some type of trouble in Mexico, and Amy is going there to find out what is happening; they agree to not tell their father any bad news until they know for sure.
Frank arrives in Denver expecting to see Robert conduct the city's orchestra. It turns out Robert is "only" a percussionist. Robert also tells Frank his visit is at a bad time, as the orchestra is flying to Europe the next day. So, within hours Frank prepares to take a bus to Las Vegas to visit his daughter Rosie. After missing his bus, Frank catches a ride part-way from a female truck driver. In a lonely hall of the train station, during an encounter with a drug addict, Frank loses his medicine. He has a dream that David is in trouble.
In Las Vegas, Rosie meets him in a stretch limo and tells him she was in a big show that he cannot visit, because it ended the previous week. She takes him to her apartment, where her friend Jilly brings over her baby for babysitting. Frank finds out the apartment is actually not Rosie's. During dinner, Frank asks Rosie why his children never talked to him, when they told their mother everything. She reveals that he always expected too much of them and he was never a good listener.
Frank flies back home but — without any more pills — he has a heart attack. Frank has another dream of his kids as young children and this reveals their secrets: Amy is separated from her husband, Robert lied about going to Europe and Rosie is really bisexual, as well as the mother of the child Jilly brought over. Frank awakens in hospital, with all of them around his bedside. They finally tell him that David has died from an overdose. That night, Frank has another dream, in which David appears and Frank tries to come to terms with his relation to his children.
After recovering, Frank visits his wife's grave and talks to her about pushing the kids too much and not trying to understand them more. He tells her everybody is fine. Frank goes back to New York and manages to buy a painting by David — a landscape showing telephone lines that are not connected.
The last scene shows the family at Christmas. All three children left are around the house helping cook and decorate the tree. It is also revealed that Rosie and Jilly are a couple and are raising the baby together. Frank finally walks into the dining room, and they happily eat together. In the background David's painting is visible.
The film received mixed reviews from film critics. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 48% based on reviews from 143 critics, with an average rating of 5.34/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "A calm, charismatic performance from Robert De Niro nearly saves the movie, but ultimately, Everybody's Fine has the look and feel of a stereotypical Christmas dramedy."[3] On Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score out of 100 to reviews from film critics, the film has a rating score of 47 based on 25 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[4]
Michael Medved gave Everybody's Fine two stars out of four, calling the film "...bleak, deeply depressive, and utterly depressing..." But he also added that "DeNiro's acting is intense and moving as always."[5]
The critical consensus praises Robert De Niro for having "intensity and presence that shines through even when he's not playing Travis Bickle/Jake LaMotta types, "but the movie becomes overly sentimental, and the supporting players aren't given three-dimensional characters to play."[6]
Box office
The film "unspooled in 10th [place] with $4 million."[7] As of December 6, the film has grossed $4,027,000.[1] It closed on December 24, 2009 after a brief three-week run.
Awards
Everybody's Fine was nominated for a GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Film – Wide Release. Drew Barrymore also received the Vanguard Award at the 21st GLAAD Media Awards ceremony, in part due to her performance in the film.[8][9]
Soundtrack
Paul McCartney wrote the ballad "(I Want to) Come Home" for the film after seeing an advance screening. Though he wrote the song from the perspective of De Niro's character, afterwards, he realized it could also be heard from the adult children's view.[10] It led to a Golden Globe nomination for Best Song.
