BEFORE: OK, I've made it to Father's Day weekend, and I've got two films left on the topic, should cover Saturday and Sunday. The plan came together, I got here on schedule and I only had to jettison two films from the chain - "Speed Racer" and "Super Mario Bros." Look, at the end it came down to "Unfrosted" or "Super Mario Bros." and I think I made the right call - "Unfrosted" had way more linking opportunities, so logic dictates I should have saved it for later, because all things being equal, it will be easier to circle back to. BUT it was on topic, the main character was a family man who worked for Kellogg's, and it seemed more like the kind of film I'd enjoy. "Bros" would be off-topic, it's not Brother's Day weekend, after all. There are big stars in both of these abandoned movies, I will try to circle back for both of them. I should still have some slots available in August and September, after accounting for docs and horror films, I just don' t know for sure how many. And if not, there's always next year.
Sebastian Maniscalco carries over from "Unfrosted". And an advance Birthday SHOUT-out to Laurie Metcalf - officially it's tomorrow, June 16 so I'm a day early. Maybe that's a sign I should have delayed this by one day and landed this film right on Father's Day itself.
THE PLOT: Leo and Angela Russo live a simple life in Queens, surrounded by their overbearing Italian-American family. When their son "Sticks" finds success on his high-school basketball team, Leo tears the family apart trying to get him a college scholarship.
AFTER: Something that "Unfrosted" and "Somewhere in Queens" have in common, they are both directorial debuts for their lead actors, who both had long-running TV sitcoms - Jerry Seinfeld and Ray Romano.
But I prioritized this one for Father's Day weekend for several reasons, one is that it links to tomorrow's Father's Day movie, obviously, but also because it ALSO played at the theater where I work, as part of the Tuesday night film appreciation class, mostly attended by senior citizens. And yes, I managed that screening, checked in the attendees and probably also ran mikes during the Q&A afterwards. I don't remember for sure if there was a panel afterwards, or who was on it, but I know it wasn't Ray Romano, I would have remembered that. "Wish", "Wonka", "Somewhere in Queens" and tomorrow's film all played at the theater for one reason or another, it's just a bit weird that four films that did that all wound up in the same Movie Week for me. But I guess if a film plays at the theater then I'm more aware of it, more likely to put it on the list, and even more likely to get around to watching it, so maybe it's not really that weird at all.
The plot of this film is somewhat in line with "I Love My Dad", only that Patton Oswalt film really took the same concept to the extreme, with a father catfishing his own son. Here Leo Russo does something similar, after his son's girlfriend breaks up with him, he notices how depressed his son has become, to the point where he doesn't even want to play basketball, a sport that he's very good at, and he's even got a chance at a basketball scholarship at Drexel University. So Leo convinces Dani, his son's ex, to pretend to get back together with him, just for a few weeks so he won't be depressed and then maybe he'll start practicing again, and then once he gets the basketball scholarship, she can break up with him again. It's, well, it's not a good idea, but it does manage to achieve the results that Leo wanted, in that Sticks does start practicing again, but it's not coming from a genuine place, and then we have to wonder if Leo is really doing this for his son, or because he enjoys being the father of a successful player and potential star college athlete.
At one point, he even offers to buy Dani a car, in exchange for getting back together with her son, so that she can drive across country during the summer, and this seems to be a life goal of hers. She turns down the car, because, well, what would that make her, in the end? It's a little too close to prostitution, or something, having her ex-boyfriend's father pay her to date him.
Things get more complicated when Leo's wife, Angela, sees Dani in the mall shopping with another man and kissing him, and she's convinced that Dani is cheating on Sticks. Of course Angela is unaware of her husband's arrangement with Dani, so what else is she supposed to think?
Meanwhile, Leo is having work problems, he's employed by his own father in the family construction business, however his younger brother has surpassed him and become a foreman, while Leo has not. So there are some complicated family dynamics here, perhaps, or it could be that Leo is just incapable of succeeding, or afraid of success, or something. His wife is a cancer survivor, so perhaps her medical issues got in the way? It's tough to say, but it seems like Leo's endured a lot over the years, and maybe it's logical that he wants his son to succeed at basketball just a bit too much, also he'd love for his son to escape being sucked into the family business. Not that this justifies Leo's actions, but it possibly does explain them.
I know a few things about this world, not just because I live in Queens, NY, but my wife is of Italian descent and I've been to many functions - marriages, funerals - with her extended family. For a while we celebrated Thanksgiving with my brother-in-law's Sicilian family on Long Island, but that marriage ended so we're back down to just one Italian family and their occasional celebrations. Also I was trying to figure out where they filmed the basketball scenes in this movie, because even though the team was the Glendale Cougars, I was willing to bet they didn't shoot in Glendale, Queens, and I was right. A little Googling revealed that the basketball scenes were filmed at Christ the King, which is a parochial private school in Queens, and we happen to know a married couple, friends of my brother-in-law, who teach there.
Anyway, it's a complicated but perhaps very realistic portrayal of fatherhood, warts and all, like Leo is tempted to have an affair with an attractive woman who's having work done on her house, and then there's this whole situation with his son's girlfriend that oof, just doesn't feel right at times, even though Leo had good intentions, it's hard to justify this fake girlfriend arrangement.
Also starring Ray Romano (last seen in "Eulogy"), Laurie Metcalf (last seen in "Georgia Rule"), Jacob Ward, Sadie Stanley, Tony Lo Bianco (last seen in "The Seven-Ups"), Jennifer Esposito (last seen in "Welcome to Collinwood"), Jon Manfrellotti (last seen in "Welcome to Mooseport"), Dierdre Friel (last seen in "Second Act"), Katie Kreisler (last seen in "Melinda and Melinda"), Jennifer Simard (last seen in "The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas"), Danny Garcia, Erik Griffin (last seen in "Murder Mystery"), Franco Maicas, Adam Kaplan, June Gable (last seen in "Maestro"), P.J. Byrne (last seen in "Because I Said So"), Seth Barrish (last seen in "Love After Love"), Geoffrey Owens (last seen in "Fatale"), Dario Vazquez, David St. Louis, Caryn Richman, Kevin Qian, Marshall Davis Jones, Matt Romano, Joe Romano, Christina Catechis, James Ciccone (last seen in "Worth"), Frank Santorelli, Lauren Biazzo, Amanda Corday, Lucas Owen, J.C. MacKenzie (last seen in "American Fiction"), Bill Canning, Joe Caniano, Steve Garfanti, Jackson Pace, Harry Freedman, Joseph Petraglia, Karen Lynn Gorney (last seen in "Clifford the Big Red Dog"), Sam Massaro (last seen in "Vice" (2018)), Manuel Santiago, Elizabeth Yu
RATING: 6 out of 10 quotes from the movie "Rocky".
No comments:
Post a Comment