Italian-American families that express their love by yelling at each other practically comprise a film genre all their own. “Moonstruck,” “Big Night,” the whole “Sopranos” saga, the earthy chemistry of bickering and pasta has fueled some truly great entertainment.

The latest addition to this cinematic tradition is “City Island,” the story of the Rizzo family and the secrets that they keep.
Vince Rizzo (Andy Garcia) is a prison guard in New York City. He can’t seem to get through a conversation with his wife, Joyce (Julianna Margulies), without it dissolving into an argument. And for all the shouting, he can’t find a way to let her know what’s going on in his life. He hides his cigarette habit from her by leaning out the bathroom window while he smokes and he tells her he’s playing poker when, in fact, he’s taking an acting class in the city. But recently a bigger secret has come into his life. He’s realized that a new inmate at the prison is his son from an affair he got involved in when he was nineteen. The inmate, Tony (Steven Strait), doesn’t know that Vince is his father while Joyce and his kids have never heard about the affair. Vince wants to do something for his newly discovered son so he has Tony paroled in his custody. This would be well and good except that Vince can’t muster the courage to divulge his relationship to his family—or to Tony. He makes up a set of stories about his relationship to Tony (the family doesn’t even know he’s a convict) and parks him in the shed behind the house.

Director Ray de Felitta is betting that this combustible brew of family secrets will ignite his domestic comedy and just to make sure he salts the story with secret upon secret. It turns out that everyone in the family smokes and is making sure no one else knows. The daughter, Vivian (Dominik Garcia-Lorido) is supposed to be in college but is, in fact, working as a stripper while Vince’s teenage son, Vince Jr. (Ezra Miller) has become obsessed with a rather quirky wrinkle on internet porn.

It’s a bit of a gimmick, but it’s a gimmick that works. The clumsy manipulations the family uses to avoid the truth result in a hardy mix of well-earned laughs. He sets up Tony as the only character who sees through most of the lies and poor Tony begins to wonder what kind of nuthouse he’s been paroled to.

De Felitta has a decent script and a talented cast to work with and he makes good use of them. Julianna Margulies almost steals the film as the hot-tempered Joyce. Margulies looks great and brings a sexy fire to her fights with the exasperated Vince. She does for Joyce what James Gandolfini did for Tony Soprano: you end up enjoying her performance so much you’re not sure how much the script has to do with it.

A lot of good movies give a glimpse of the greatness they couldn’t quite achieve and leave an aftertaste of longing for the film that might have been. “City Island” isn’t one of those films. It isn’t destined to be a classic like “Moonstruck;” it lacks the inspired melodrama of Cher and Nicolas Cage. But, it is complete in it’s own right. De Felitta set out to create a sweet and funny film and he pulled it off.

Directed by Raymond de Felitta
Rated PG-13
*** (Three Stars)