Robert DeNiro’s newest film could help if you stared at empty seats around your Thanksgiving dinner table.

Parents who want their kids home for Christmas may do well by persuading them to see “Everybody’s Fine,” which opens on Friday in US theaters.

Director-writer Kirk Jones said, “I’m hoping it might catch the moment, and it might catch the Christmas spirit and the Thanksgiving spirit.”

Jones also said that the movie is targeted at people with parents, brothers, sisters, or children, Jones said. He added, “Pretty much everyone. It’s about family.”

The cross-country journey of DeNiro’s character while struggling to bring together his grown children for Christmas, several months after their mother’s death, is the center of the story.

The veteran actor plays a sensitive, aging father who imagines that “everybody’s fine,” which serves as solace for his lonely suffering.

However, his children—played by Drew Barrymore, Kate Beckinsale, and Sam Rockwell—were not living the lives he had fantasized for them.

(article and photo source: CNN)