Indie movie distributors surely must be on constant lookout for the next “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” a cheaply made little crowd-pleaser that can settle into a theater and generate nice word-of-mouth.
“City Island” won’t be quite as fat or as Greek as that fluke, but it’s got similar appeal: a comedy about a family in which everybody pushes everybody else’s buttons — but they love each other anyway, goshdarnit.
The setting is a Bronx neighborhood, City Island, an odd little enclave that skirts the edge of the metropolis. Vince Rizzo, played by Andy Garcia, is a prison guard, although he’d really rather you call him a corrections officer.
Vince has a nice house, nice wife (Julianna Margulies), and two kids who have their secrets, as he does.
Vince’s secret is that he’s taking an acting class once a week, although his wife thinks he’s playing poker (gambling being a far more socially excusable activity than acting). This becomes a charming subplot, as Vince goes on a larkish audition for a Robert De Niro movie, which doesn’t go the way he thought.
His college-student daughter (Dominik Garcia-Lorido, real-life daughter of Andy Garcia) has a sideline job that won’t please her father, and Vince’s adolescent son (the hilariously deft Ezra Miller) harbors an online fetish for overweight women.
And there’s another surprise in store for Vince, involving an inmate (Steven Strait) at the prison, but — perhaps that’s enough synopsis for now. Suffice it to say that the movie is as believable as the average sitcom, but that it redeems itself with lived-in atmosphere, tasty behavioral moments from the cast and some genuinely funny lines.
It’s not exactly a great movie, but writer-director Raymond De Fellita (who did the odd, similar “The Thing About My Folks” a few years back) brings just enough of a cockeyed touch to the material that the film does leave a pleasant afterglow. And good word of mouth, I suspect.
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