Writer/Director: Kirk Jones
Starring: Robert DeNiro, Kate Beckinsale, Drew Barrymore, Sam Rockwell, a storm called Truth
Review: 2.5 stars (of five)
The last page of notes I scribbled during this screening says, “Should be called ‘Everybody’s Sad & Lying About It.’” This movie, with its cheerful poster of a smiling, brand-name cast sorta looks like it’s meant to be the heartwarming family comedy of the holidays. It’s not. Do not take a friend who’s very stressed out about family and work woes to see this movie because she needs a lift. It’s very distracting to the rest of the audience when you spend the whole second act apologizing profusely through her tears.
Robert DeNiro — in a brilliantly understated performance — is an aging widower discovering that he has no real relationship with his children, who all cancel on the big family reunion he has planned. So he decides to inflict surprise visits on each of them (perhaps suspecting, though it’s never said, that he knows that’s the only way to get them to make time for him). In his effort to connect with his family, he’s frustrated both by the demanding father he was in their youths and by the secrets they’re keeping from him.
One of the problems with this film is that mix. On the one hand, DeNiro’s reaping what he sowed, and is unaware of the truth of that, but on the other, the kids are lying about a current crisis one of the four is suffering, and turn out to all have other secrets, as well. The balance between the choices the kids make, today, and the choices DeNiro made years ago doesn’t quite work. It makes sense —the former flows largely from the latter — but doesn’t come together on film. Neither does the conclusion, which tells us that if you confront your past sins in a stylized dream sequence, you will wake up to find all the real-life people you had your dream therapy session with will be right on the same page, 
and everyone can be honest and start hugging, just in time for you to declare that “Everybody’s fine,” and let the credits roll.
The film is remade from an Italian piece, though I don’t recall seeing that in the opening credits or on the poster, where Kirk Jones (Waking Ned Devine) is listed as sole writer and director. As a director, he’s made a nice-lookin’ film in which his very talented cast shines. As a writer, he can’t seem to bring the subtlety he lays out in individual scenes to his overall storytelling.
Individual moments give good, nuanced material to the stoic yet achingly lonely DeNiro. Yet the film meanders, overall, and Jones can’t stop hitting us with clumsy metaphor. DeNiro sits on a bus beside a woman who tells him that her name is Alice, which means “truth,” same as the hurricane that’s been mentioned as rolling up the east coast. 
See, we know his kids are lying, and that DeNiro doesn’t see the truths about himself, either. There’s a storm on the horizon, baby, and its name is Truth! Miramax films are deep, yo.
Despite Jones’ limitations, he’s blessed with a terrific cast. Rockwell and Beckinsale are both good in their usual ways — she’s cool, polished beauty and he’s rough, unfinished slack. Drew Barrymore, charming as all hell, plays a daughter who clearly dotes on her father. She can’t take her eyes off him, and it’s fun to wonder whether her character is so enamored of her dad, or it’s just that Barrymore is jumping out of her skin about working with Robert Goddamn DeNiro.
That might be the way to approach this film. It’s an actors’ film, and if you want to see DeNiro in one of his most subtly crafted roles in years, working with good people, then suck up the other limitations and call this a four-star film. If you’re looking for a film that works all the way through, or some light and uplifting holiday fare, you won’t be so enchanted.
