City Island

Time Out says

Tue Jul 20 2010

The lies family members tell each other form the basis for many an overheated melodrama, but few as entertainingly OTT as ‘City Island’. Andy Garcia plays Vince, a working-class family man who hides his passion for acting from wife Joyce (Julianna Margulies). Their daughter (Dominik Garcia-Lorido) can’t admit she strips to pay for college, while son Vince Jr (Ezra Miller, so good in ‘Afterschool’) has a furtive passion for chubby women.

The movie is a mixed bag: for every keen insight there’s a cliché, for every quiet character moment a scene of outrageous overacting – Garcia, for instance, lays on the Common Man routine with a trowel. But these flaws don’t detract from what is an enjoyable, thoughtful and old fashioned celebration of human flaws and familial foibles. Writer-director Raymond De Felitta – who made a splash last year with excellent jazz doc ‘ ’Tis Autumn’ – displays a sure hand, and it all comes together in a wonderfully unrestrained climactic scene of pure melodramatic overkill. Great fun.

Author: Tom Huddleston