Here is Just Daves review. Sorry no smart ass comments from me , just the review…

‘City Island’ refers to an outer borough of New York city which is located on the tip of Long Island; It is under a square mile big and houses approximately 5000 people...none more interesting than bored prison guard/ aspiring actor Vince Rizzo it seems. He is played by the brilliant Andy Garcia (famous for his Godfather Part 3 role, and also from chewing scenery in the Oceans Eleven series).

The film’s story is about him becoming distanced from his bored wife (Julianna Marguilles, The Sopranos), his bored son who has a fat chick fetish, his bored daughter (who is secretly a stripper). This boredom gets shuffled up when Vince opts to bring his ex-con and perennially shirtless son home to meet the family.. as well as opting to secretly take an acting class. Hijinks ensue.

City Island is not a horrendous movie, its just very middle of the road. At its heart is a story about how dishonesty can be the death knell for any relationship, yet it manages to overshadow this with a multitude of unnecessary story-lines that ultimately fizzle out and go nowhere. The film is director Raymond De Felitta’s second film, he also wrote it.

So Vince pretends to go to poker games whilst its really acting class. He meets another aspiring actress played woefully by Emily Mortimer. They begin a plutonic relationship. Whenever the film deviates from this storyline the scenes just feel like filler. It seems that De Felitta needed to pad out his story to achieve the standard running time. We don’t need 20 minutes on his son who spies on fat women because of his fetish, we don’t need scenes in which the daughter is struggling at her strip club, we don’t need endless, endless scenes in which the prisoner son works out half naked and gets perved on by the daughter and wife. The film wants to be about Vince, but it is constructed in a way that disallows this.

The script itself, seems to be very deliberate...In that film student sense. At the twenty minute mark this needs to happen. On the forty-fifth page this needs to occur. Tie it all up with this beat here. It’s all very calculated; from easy cheap symbolism and an over emphasis on expository dialogue. All it ends up doing is making for a very predictable, cheese ball safe film - which ultimately goes against everything that is brought up. With major inconsistencies - practically over-flooding the last act - everything the film has going for it is tossed away in the final moments. The film bookends with cheesy voiceover in the final closing moments and they have a reference to God that was so out of place it caused laughter in the theater.

Besides all the many issues, the film is breezy - only because of the fine performances throughout. Every scene Garcia has is gold - He just has this ability and it makes you sad that the film-makers decided against using his story as the entire film. It’s a wasted opportunity and what you end up with is a slightly enjoyable, yet meandering and ultimately pointless film.

The way it’s shot is very dull, it seems like a television pilot for a soap opera most of the time. When it is not some feel good radio hit song, the music is maudlin and very manipulative.

I don’t really have much further to say about City Island, but there is however a couple of interesting things I would like to bring up - I’m not very sure how they fit in the scheme of things, but we’ll see... The film goes out of its way to condemn women and actors. In the first twenty minutes we get a entire scene devoted to slamming method acting, calling out Marlin Brando as a hack. Then later we get a entire dialogue about how anybody can act - as well as an entertaining audition sequence which literally makes a joke out of the entire casting process actors endure; in a film with such strong performances (Garcia and Marguilles) the contempt for the craft is inexcusable.

Women are treated worse. The female characters do nothing but cheat, sleep around, and perve on good looking men. The only scenes with them; feature arguments and display a complete submission to men. There is even a moment in which Vince’s Daughter ) trips and falls on the ground...it’s ridiculous in the way its shot, obvious that it only serves so that the male character can stand over her and be dominant. It’s odd because we never get a scene in which any of the women seem at all like real people.

Emily Mortimer’s character acts as the exposition; explaining everything with amateur psychology and captain obvious overtones. It’s condescending; she ends up encapsulating the contempt for women with her descriptions of them: “come on Vince” she says in one scene “women feel challenged by too much honesty at once”. Wow. It doesn’t help that she is just plain awful as well.

City Island is the type of movie that ends on a sunset, and if thats what you are looking for then you shouldn’t be disappointed, its pure escapism masquerading as commentary. If they had focused on the actual themes and plot this could have been a fine film...at least Andy Garcia is on fine form.