Frank Goode (Robert De Niro), an eight months widowed retiree lives by himself in Elmira, New York, is getting ready for his children, David (Austin Lysy), Rosie (Drew Barrymore), Amy (Kate Beckinsale) and Robert (Sam Rockwell) to come visit him in the summer for the first family get-together after their mother died. However, one by one though, each of them call to cancel on him at the last minute.
Deflated at first, Frank decides to head out on a cross-country trip to pay them all a surprise visit, despite warnings against travel from his doctor who says he needs to rest. He is chronically ill with cardiac and respiratory problems from his life work making PVC-covered power lines. He deceives his children about his health and telling them that he is fine. Frank travels by train to each of his children's homes, beginning with his artist son David who is absent from his New York apartment. His daughter Amy, the advertising executive in Chicago, his son Robert, the conductor on tour and presently in Denver and his daughter Rosie who is a performer in Vegas. In each case, his visit appears to be untimely and he is quickly shunted from one sibling to another, all of whom seem to hiding things from him. Amy was hiding that her husband had an affair, that her creative director was her boyfriend and that her son wasn't at the top of his class. Robert hid that he was a percussionist and not the conductor of an orchestra. Rosie was hiding that she wasn't a dancer, her fancy apartment doesn't belong to her and she had a child without Frank knowing.
Frank then decides to return home by plane and suffers a heart attack just before the plane land. He has a vision of him taking the day off to talk to his children (depicted as youngsters). He asks them what on earth can he now say to their mother and the young Rosie replies, "Tell her nothing if you love her as she loves you. Tell her what she wants to hear. Tell her we're all fine".
While in the hospital with his children, they finally tell him the truth that David has died in Mexico of a drug overdose, he can't accept it and breaks down. Upon his release from the hospital, Frank goes back to the gallery where he sees a painting in the window painted by David and wants to buy it but it has been sold. The gallery assistant recognizes his surname and takes him to the storeroom to show him a picture of the home landscape with telegraph poles painted by David. A metaphor of Frank's life, a telephone cable maker who spent his entire life working to provide for his family. She tells him that David always said without his father's push, he would never have become an artist.
I like this film, so much reality existed in it; parents who still see their grown up children as small kids, children bringing the good news instead of the truth back home to spare the discomfort or to avoid being disapproved, a father who is worry yet too hard at times and children grown up with different paths in lives after leaving a family nest and becoming distant. A lot of similarities with the real life in a family.
In the film, when Robert and Rosie watching the back of Frank off in the train station and airport respectively, it reminds me the time when my parents sending me off in airport for a course trip and looking at my parents from the boarding gate, they have grow old so much that I have not realize as we are so busy with our lives and it just make you feel like you want to spend more time with them.
A sentimental film that reminds us of a FAMILY (Father and Mother I Love You). A healthy foundation for life's adventures to support you in times of need, to challenge you to grow and to celebrate with you in times of victory.
Parents were the only ones obligated to love you;
from the rest of the world you had to earn it.
Movie Trailer:
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