From a director you’ve never heard of and a cast you’ll barely recognise (aside from Andy Garcia), comes a movie you’re not likely to forget. This isn’t your regular offbeat comedy about the ins and outs of a family – it’s funnier. The funniest things always stem from the truth and so many of the ideas in ‘City Island’ are straight from real life. I mean, we’ve all run into the back of another car when we’ve come to a stop at a red light because we’ve been so distracted, right? Oh, that’s just me? Don’t tell my parents.

Secrets are at the heart of this film, mirrored in the setting – ‘City Island’ – an overlooked section of the Bronx. It’s not the New York you’re used to seeing on screen, but this is a neighbourhood with its own charms that this big screen presentation capitalises on.

Admittedly, ‘City Island’ travels down a predictable road as years of conditioning have left us with the uneasy belief that all secrets must come out in the end. Shakespeare capitalised on it, so does Hollywood, and now those American films that get relegated to the ‘Foreign’ section of your DVD store do it. Unsurprisingly, the plot reaches farcical extremes that are contrived, but it’s a formula that works. The plot is helped along by moments of spot on dialogue that shine through when the characters aren’t yelling for the sake of it.

This results in the LOLs coming in a few varieties – from the “OMG, that’s so wrong!” to the *Appreciative chuckle* and “Whoah! But so true”. Even though this is a movie about secrets, the storytelling is truthful and the irony is so accurate to life it leaves a nonsense commodity like ‘Hot Tub Time Machine’ for dead.

But like life, this movie has a serious side, dealing with real issues such as the pressure you feel to please your family and the fine line between enlisting their help and pretending things are fine – like in ‘Holes’. The family dynamics and relationships are too messy to get into here but if that sounds familiar enough to you, you should definitely see this movie with the drama makers in your life so you can share a laugh at some of the absurdities of family life.

‘City Island’ is released May 27
National Release Date: 27 May 2010
Running Time: 100 minutes