GRADE: B

Even more than its Italian predecessor, “Everybody’s Fine” is a simple tale, simply told, with a pleasant absence of dysfunctional histrionics. Translation: it’s a film that effortlessly advances a credible story about a parent and his four grown children without serving up too big a portion of Freudian angst, yelling and phony embraces.

In fact, there’s barely a moment in director Kirk Jones’ re-make of Giuseppe Tornatore’s 1990 film when voices are raised, his basic screenplay a commendable collection of realistic encounters between a father and his children of a type more common to real life, where family members are rarely as direct and articulate when dealing with one another the way they so often are in movies.

Only in the foregoing way is Jones’ concoction really different, but it’s an important distinction among these types of films, and it helps to keep the whole affair grounded in a way that’s surprisingly refreshing in spite of the film’s melancholy subtext. Some critics have complained that’s precisely the problem with “Everybody’s Fine”—it’s so stuck to the ground, it never takes off, never takes flight.

There’s some truth to that, from a certain point of view, as many families are no strangers to blowups, battles and high-pitched debates. But not every family is like that, something one would be hard-pressed to believe judging by the way Hollywood generally stages emotional confrontations between people from the same pack.

I enjoyed and appreciated the fact that Jones’ approach to the material was patently low key and that he never gave into the tendency to “kick it up a notch,” as so many young filmmakers do. The same restraint is shown in the simple ways Jones shot the picture, consistently resisting the urge to show off cinematically with a lot of sweeping camera moves or an over-edited palette of useless montage.

Ironically, by taking this tact, which often involves the use of a stationary camera, something of a lost art in modern filmmaking, Jones’ winds up letting the natural landscapes and authentic interiors speak for themselves, and the result is a moving visual portrait of a father’s meditative journey, interesting to look at from beginning to end.

There are the requisite twists and surprises, most of them gentle and expected, but no less profound, with Jones’ screenplay somehow managing to give equal relevance to issues large and small without ever equivocating their standing.

No doubt, baby-boomers and other mature viewers will derive the most satisfaction out of “Everybody’s Fine,” what with its reflective subject matter and focus on past regrets. But its universal theme of hope and dreams measured against the reality of what lies before us is something we all have in common.

“Everybody’s Fine” didn’t get a fair shake from most critics or even the credit for the fact that, in many ways, it outdistances the original version by reducing the story to its most important central elements, content to be a solid genre piece that breaks no new ground, but covers it well.

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