A widower trying to reconnect with his children is a potent topic for a movie. Or at least it was when Jack Nicholson had a go at it in Alexander Payne's About Schmidt. Robert De Niro's take is to play it glum and glummer, as he glowers throughthis Americanized version of Giuseppe Tornatore's 1990 Italian original.

De Niro, in the role originated by a masterful Marcello Mastroianni, never really gets under the thick skin of Frank Goode, newly retired from a workaholic career at a wire factory. Frank just doesn't get why his four neglected children, now grown, aren't eager to fit him into their lives, even when he travels around the country to pay a visit.

Drew Barrymore, Kate Beckinsale and Sam Rockwell, as three of the Goode kids, are good actors sucked down in the plot's sentimental quicksand. I won't tell you about the fourth child because, well, I bet you can guess. No trite, tear-jerking cliché goes undrooled in the script by director Kirk Jones, who won awards for his Absolut vodka TV ads. I don't see any awards coming the way of Everybody's Fine. I, for one, am not fine about it.

“(We're Not) The Jet Set”

George Jones and Tammy Wynette were still married when they recorded the tongue-in-cheek "(We're Not) The Jet Set." The lyrics, written by Nashville songwriter Bobby Braddock, who also penned Wynette's "D-I-V-O-R-C-E" and Jones' "He Stopped Loving Her Today," make fun of the good life by declaring, "We're not the Jet Set/We're the old Chevrolet set." Braddock recalled that while writing the song, he needed the name of a city that evened out the rhyme he had with "Riviera" and "Missourah." “I got out a Rand McNally atlas," he said. "In the first part are the maps. The last part is an alphabetical listing of cities. I wanted a rustic, small-time sound. I went to the listing for Missouri. And I found 'Festus.' I loved the sound of it."