There's no real thrust to this family tale of false ambition
This week's second, and poorer remake transposes Giuseppe Tornatore's 1990 Stanno tutti bene from Italy to the States. The original stars Marcello Mastroianni as a Sicilian widower travelling up Italy to visit his estranged children and discovering their sad, self-deceiving lives. It's essentially a bitter state-of-the-nation picture. The American version follows Tornatore's plot quite closely with the widower journeying east to west from upper New York state to Las Vegas. But there's no apparent political or social thrust, just a family tale of false ambition, with Robert De Niro's father a victim of the American Dream. Unfortunately he's a tedious fellow, boring everyone with talk of his emblematic job making telephone wire. His taste is revealed in the opening shot in his garden: a reproduction of the Manneken Pis urinating into a goldfish pond.
DramaRobert De NiroPhilip French
guardian.
This week's second, and poorer remake transposes Giuseppe Tornatore's 1990 Stanno tutti bene from Italy to the States. The original stars Marcello Mastroianni as a Sicilian widower travelling up Italy to visit his estranged children and discovering their sad, self-deceiving lives. It's essentially a bitter state-of-the-nation picture. The American version follows Tornatore's plot quite closely with the widower journeying east to west from upper New York state to Las Vegas. But there's no apparent political or social thrust, just a family tale of false ambition, with Robert De Niro's father a victim of the American Dream. Unfortunately he's a tedious fellow, boring everyone with talk of his emblematic job making telephone wire. His taste is revealed in the opening shot in his garden: a reproduction of the Manneken Pis urinating into a goldfish pond.
DramaRobert De NiroPhilip French
guardian.
- 2/28/2010
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
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