6-17-10 Movie Review: City Island

Non-commercials are going ape this week, with 3 offerings tonight, one Friday, one Saturday, and one each on Sunday and Wednesday. So be prepared to consult websites.

Tonight, Thursday: The League of Women Voters has its second discussion meeting with the PBS program “One Woman, One Vote,” about the suffrage movement, 6:30 in the Downtown Senior Center, 200 South Walnut, one block south of Douglas and one east of Seneca; the Orpheum has Chevy Chase in the first of the National Lampoon “vacation” movies of the eighties, National Lampoon’s Vacation, at 7; Al Fresco has Michael Keaton, Danny Devito, and Marilu Henner in Amy Heckerling’s Johnny Dangerously at the Brickyard, 129 North Rock Island, at 8. Then on Friday, the Augusta Historic Theatre celebrates its 75th anniversary with The Wizard of Oz, on film, not DVD, at 7:30; and Saturday the Orpheum has a special meeting featuring the film , with interviews with Kansas filmmakers and cast members by Anita Cochran at 7:30 too. And the Murdock, 536 North Broadway, shows the Metropolitan Opera production of Verdi’s Aida Sunday at 2:30, and Wednesday at 6:30 shows Met’s production of Gounod’s Romeo and Juliette, in both cases on the big screen with subtitles.

And ain’t it our luck that, with such rare riches, we also have a first-rate domestic comedy that probably won’t be here very long?

City Island doesn’t have comic-book origins, superheroes, car chases, big orange explosions, thesauruses of bad language, or fashion parades; it hopes we can be interested by relatively real people in relatively common human relationships and situations, without violence or graphic sex, unaccompanied by ear-shattering rock music – in a word, it hopes there is still an audience of grownups out there.

Well, one can hope. But I’d call the theatre to be sure City Island is still showing.

Andy Garcia heads a family that for reasons unexplained does not trust each other enough to reveal secrets that really should not need keeping, though they might cause embarrassment or maybe a little bit worse, unless motivations are understood. The daughter is a pole dancer, not a stripper, and has good reason for needing a lot of money in a hurry; the father, Garcia, is taking acting lessons but has not lofty opinion of his chances; the son has unusual taste in women but isn’t outrageous about them. Garcia, like Sandra Bullock in The Blindside but with better motive, introduces a young delinquent male into this nest of confusion, with consequences both comical and humanly convincing.

There isn’t much intellectual challenge here, though I wondered why Alan Arkin’s diatribe against pauses in acting appears early in a movie almost overloaded with very effective pause, and I do wonder why there is so little real intimacy in a family that doesn’t have any of the stereotypical problems. I just liked the people, who for once are not fools, and wished them well, and appreciated the unpredictable endings to most of the various plots.

I liked City Island, but don’t have much hope for a long run.