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.

“Alison”

On Elvis Costello’s country-tinged ballad, the lyric does not get too sentimental in recalling an ex who had since been with one of the singer's "little friends" and is now married. Some believe the song is about murder, due to lines like “Sometimes I wish that I could stop you from talking,” "Somebody better put out the big light" and, of course, "My aim is true,” which became the title of Costello's debut album. In 2002, Costello told Rolling Stone, “It isn’t [about murder]. It’s about disappointing somebody. It’s a thin line between love and hate, as the Persuaders sang.”