Farcical family fare in 'City Island'

It may be a very specific locale, but "City Island" is a broad comedy. It's a domestic farce where everyone in the Rizzo household harbors secrets, hiding their smoking - and many other habits - from each other.

Vince (Andy Garcia) is a prison security guard, married to a secretary, Joyce (Julianna Margulies). Both are showing some wear from 20 years of marriage and creeping middle-age regrets.

Their daughter, Vivian (Dominik Garcia-Lorido, Garcia's real-life daughter), is home from college on spring break, but has - unbeknownst to her parents - lost her scholarship and taken up stripping to make money. Their son Vinnie Jr. (Ezra Miller) is a high school teenager in the midst of discovering his sexuality. He's drawn to larger women and has a fetish for feeding them.

Vince has two dark secrets. One, he fathered a child before he was married that he never helped raise. Vince's more shameful secret is that lowliest sin of all: He wants to be an actor. Alan Arkin plays his exasperated drama teacher (tired of Brando impressions, he asks his students for "a moratorium on pauses").

The many closeted skeletons all eventually come out in an operatic rush. The fallout is nearly disastrous, which is enough to make the movie's tidy ending almost sarcastic.

New York writer-director Raymond De Felitta has made the messy, comic interiors of family life a continual theme. In "City Island," he succeeds most in gathering an entertaining ensemble and eliciting funny melodrama.