City Island

"Andy Garcia keeps it in the family..."

"A professionally executed farce of the yelling-family variety, “City Island” revolves around a blue-collar clan with more secrets than filters. At the head of the table is Vince (Andy Garcia), a stolid corrections officer and clandestine acting student; facing him is Joyce (Julianna Margulies), the wife who wonders where the passion has gone. Add a daughter (Mr. Garcia’s real-life daughter, Dominik Garcia-Lorido) who’s stripping instead of studying and a teenage son (Ezra Miller) who fantasizes about feeding doughnuts to fat women and you have a household that, even by current comedy standards, strains credulity."

"A labour of love for producer-star Andy Garcia, this drama of blue collar lives in New York is a little on the soapy side, says Peter Bradshaw"

"Vince is a man with a dream. Marlon Brando is his god. He would like to become an actor. This is not likely. He's well into his 40s, a prison guard living with his family on City Island, a bucolic outcrop of the Bronx known mostly to its residents. Telling his wife he's going to a poker game, Vince attends acting classes in Manhattan. In one class, Vince creates a spot-on imitation, not of Marlon Brando, but of bad Brando imitators."

"A little drama, a little farce, a little humour, an easy film to enjoy and forget"

"An, at-times, marvellous muddle of high farce and low-brow chuckles"

"The real City Island is less of an actual island and more a big sandbar, really."