In "Two Family House," Buddy Visalo(Michael Rispoli, who is excellent) has a chance to audition for Arthur Godfrey but is dissuaded because of his impending marriage to Estelle(Kathrine Narducci). In the following eleven years, they live with her parents in Staten Island where he toils in a factory while none of his
business ideas including limo driver, house painter and pizza delivery amount to much. In the spring of 1956, he decides to buy a fixer upper and live on the second floor, turning the first into a tavern. But there is a drunken reprobate and freeloader, Jim O'Neary(Kevin Conway), and his pregnant wife, Mary(Kelly Macdonald), living on the second floor and the law is on their side. But when Buddy and his friends try to forcibly evict the couple, Mary goes into labor. And boy is everybody surprised at the brown hue of the baby... Mildly predictable, "Two Family House" is a movie about the American dream that is equal parts funny and touching. Buddy's dream is not so much to be successful but to work at something that is his very own. In other ways, the American dream should be about a country without bigotry which it was not in the 1950's, even in the North, which are portrayed here as an era of stifling conformity where there is little interaction outside of one's social circle. But there is a glimmer of hope that the era of sitting in judgment will be coming to an end.
December 6, 2007
