Two Family House

Theatrical Release Date: 2000 10 06 (USA - Limited)

UPC: 025192126123

Studio: Lions Gate

MPAA Rating: R   Contains:[Profanity, Sexual Situations]

Summary: Raymond De Felitta directs this warm, colorful tale about a blue collar dreamer who gets more than he bargained for after buying a two-family house. Set during the 1950s in Staten Island, the film charts the financial failures of Buddy (Michael Rispoli), a nice-guy entrepreneur who has perpetual bad luck. While he was in the army, he sang songs on stage to bolster troop morale. During one performance, he received a warm reception from none other than Arthur Godfrey, who invited him to audition when he got back to the U.S. After the war, Buddy's crushingly pragmatic wife Estelle (Katherine Narducci,) along with her very traditional parents, dissuade him from a life in showbiz. After a decade of living with Estelle's parents and failing repeatedly at one get-rich-quick scheme after another, Buddy buys a rundown house with the idea of refurbishing the second floor for living quarters and the first for a pizzeria where he can sing. Estelle grudgingly goes along with it, secretly hoping that this plan will fail so disastrously that he will stop dreaming and lead a "normal" life. Not until he finalizes the purchase does Buddy realize that the house has a pair of squatters: Jim (Kevin Conway), a drunken Irish immigrant, and his much younger, very pregnant girlfriend Mary (Kelly Macdonald). Buddy tries to evict the recalcitrant drunkard, but he refuses to leave. Just as matters are about to come to fisticuffs, Mary goes into labor. To the surprise of everyone, the child is of mixed raced -- the product of a brief tryst that Mary had with an African-American man a while back. Disgusted and disappointed, Jim shuffles off never to be seen. Buddy hasn't quite the heart to evict a young single mother, nor the strength to resist his wife's perpetual nagging, so he quietly pays for a room in a neighborhood boarding house. Though Mary is initially very mistrustful of Buddy's intentions, the two slowly realize that they are in fact soul mates. This film was highly praised at the 2000 Sundance Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, Rovi

Category: Drama

Awards: Audience Award – Sundance Film Festival Special Mention for Excellence in Filmmaking – National Board of Review Best Screenplay – Independent Spirit Awards Best Actress – Independent Spirit Awards

Features: cc16x9 widescreen (1.85:1)
English & Spanish subtitles

Two Family House

Format: Digital Video Disc (DVD)

Release Date: 05/29/2001

Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 Theatre Wide-Screen

Audio: DS Dolby Surround (4.0)

Runtime: 108 Minutes

Sides: 1

Number of Discs: 1

Language(s) English

Subtitles: English,Spanish

Chapters: Side #1 --
1. No Tomorrow [4:19]
2. Consultations [4:47]
3. Pregnant With Failure [4:18]
4. Generous Soul [3:16]
5. The Rounds [3:27]
6. Three Warnings [4:57]
7. Something Funny [5:01]
8. Very Important [3:40]
9. As Always [4:42]
10. D&D [4:29]
11. Nowhere in Sight [4:12]
12. Winner [2:57]
13. Kind of Brave [6:20]
14. Shared Meal [5:35]
15. Two to Tango [5:11]
16. Epic [3:28]
17. Good Husband [4:25]
18. Never Doubted [4:30]
19. Light of Day [4:39]
20. Negotiations [3:59]
21. Go Out & Get It [5:35]
22. This Feeling [4:48]
23. Dreams of You [5:53]
24. End Credits [3:24]

Elbert Ventura

A movie of disarming sweetness, Raymond De Felitta's Two Family House is as accomplished as it is unassuming. A period piece set in 1950s Staten Island, the movie tells the story of Buddy (Michael Rispoli), a working-class family man whose kindness -- he secretly subsidizes an adulterous Irish woman (Kelly McDonald) who has just given birth to a dark-skinned baby -- leads to pariah status in his insular Italian-American neighborhood. Casually humanistic, the movie's depiction of an ethnic community has the warm finish of fondly remembered lore. For all its seemingly fuzzy nostalgia, Two Family House serves as a corrective to idealized representations of the 1950s as a simpler (and hence, better) time. Underlying the movie's action is the neighborhood's blithe racism, which when it erupts casually in everyday banter is genuinely jarring. Made with evident affection, Two Family House makes a couple of lapses into preciousness -- a sequence depicting the narrator's first memories as an infant comes to mind -- and sometimes verges on caricature. Considering the number of opportunities the story presents for such missteps, however, the movie is impressively free of bathos and cynicism. With its generosity and unforced moralizing, Two Family House seems oddly anachronistic: a modest, humane movie about nothing less than the values we choose to live by. ~ Elbert Ventura, Rovi

Cast and Crew: Anthony Arkin  Actor 
Michele Santopietro  Actor 
Raymond de Felitta  Director 
Raymond de Felitta  Screenwriter 
Stephen Endelman  Composer (Music Score) 
Adam Brightman  Executive Producer 
Michael Rispoli  Actor 
Kelly MacDonald  Actor 
Kathrine Narducci  Actor 
Kevin Conway  Actor 
Matt Servitto  Actor 
Louis Guss  Actor 
Rosemary de Angelis  Actor 
Victor Arnold  Actor 
Richard B. Shull  Actor 

Country: USA