Susan Granger’s review of “City Island” (Anchor Bay Films)
New Yorkers, particularly those with ties to the Bronx, may feel a special affinity to this amiable, if over-the-top romantic comedy about a corrections officer, Vince Rizzo (Andy Garcia), who brings a hunky paroled inmate, Tony Nardella (Steven Strait), home to his Italian/American family on City Island, ostensibly, to do some work on the house his grandfather, an old “clam digger,” built many years before.
It seems that Tony may be the illegitimate son Vince sired long before his marriage to Joyce (Julianna Margulies), who knows nothing about this connection. Vince is also keeping another secret. While he claims to be going to a poker game, he’s actually taking acting classes in Manhattan, which leads Joyce to suspect he’s up something more sinister – like an affair. In this acting class, his drama teacher (Alan Arkin) pairs Vince with British-accented Molly (Emily Mortimer), who becomes his confidante, urging him to try out for a Martin Scorsese mob movie.
Meanwhile, Vince’s daughter, Vivian (Dominik Garcio-Lorido, Andy Garcia’s real-life daughter), dances in a strip club to pay her college tuition, while his younger son, teenage Vinnie (Ezra Miller), spends an inordinate amount of time fantasizing and searching for BBWs (big, beautiful women) on the Internet, when he’s not peeking a neighbor from his bedroom window.
Written and directed by Raymond de Felitta, it’s, basically, a farce, filled with campy melodrama and over-the-top performances, like Garcia’s comic Brando imitation in his audition piece. The locale is its most interesting aspect, yet it’s woefully under utilized. Located on the northern tip of the Bronx, City Island is a small harbor community with a rich nautical history since it’s surrounded by Long Island Sound and Eastchester Bay; the native “clam diggers” harbor an obvious antipathy toward the newly arrived “mussel suckers,” a.k.a: city dwellers who buy up cheap waterfront property. Obviously fond of location shooting, de Felitta set his previous “Two Family House” in Staten Island.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “City Island” is a contrived, soap-opera 6, delineating yet another dysfunctional family.
