Two Family House

Buddy Visalo (Michael Rispoli) is in need of some direction. Married, yet alone, childless yet "pregnant with failure," he aspires to convert his two-family house into a bar. His simple-minded search has him knocking on a lot of doors, and it's sweet-faced Mary (Kelly MacDonald), his unwanted tenant, who answers. Scorned by society for her unacceptable taste in men, she will lead him into temptation and then into salvation, teaching him how to stand up against the status quo (in this case his wife and friends) and how to risk ridicule without playing the chimp.

"Monkey" is one of the milder epithets hurled in this flick, which, to remain true to its 1950s Staten Island setting, often sinks into an exercise in ethnic slurs. Stereotypes threaten to diminish its characters: though the actors manage to transcend their roles as "Trash-Talking Wop #1" and "Drunken Mick #2," the script nonetheless slips all too easily into cliché. There's Buddy, the bumbling hero; there's Mary, the martyred mother who seems to experience an actual immaculate conception; there's Estelle, the unhappy wife (The Sopranos' Kathrine Narducci) who with her gossip circle devours her husband's dreams every day over lunch. And of course there's the Irish sot (Kevin Conway) with a penchant for pissing in the street.

Underlying the sweet-yet-typical plot line and a very American follow-your-dreams-to-success moral, however, there's another simple message: think for yourself. Perhaps writer/director Raymond De Felitta would have done well to follow his own advice, for despite its celebration of originality, the movie itself seems to be just more of the same. At the Avon.
-- Rachel Innerarity