A
lot of those free “Made in NY” subway posters doled out by the Mayor’s Office
of Media and Entertainment go to films that do not look so “made in NY,” but
that certainly won’t be an issue here. People in the City tend to forget Queens
is technically part of Long Island, but it has plenty of street smart
neighborhoods and iconic New York sites. From the Flushing Meadows-Corona Park
of World’s Fair fame to plenty of back alleys and backyards, a reluctant sad
sack searches for his girlfriend’s missing feline in Anthony Tarsitano’s Lost Cat Corona (trailer here), which opens tomorrow
in New York.
Leonard
the black cat is missing, probably to make poor Dominic’s life miserable. He
had taken the day off to attend the wake for the father of his high school pal
Sal, but the domineering Connie insists he find Leonard first. For a while,
Dominic’s buddy Ponce offers his dubious help, but all he finds is a paper bad
stuffed with cash and a severed ear. As Dominic scours the neighborhood, he
crosses paths with some criminal elements. Disappointingly, it seems old Sal
the cop is one of them. However, Dominic also re-connects with some decent
folks, including his Uncle Sam and Jimmy Pipes, a Vietnam veteran whose Purple
Heart was stolen by a local punk kid.
As
movies go, LCC is light-weight and
wafer-thin, but Ralph Macchio carries it quite well. The Karate Kid survivor was surprisingly funny in the unfairly maligned
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Undead
and he exudes an easy everyman charm as Dominic. On the other hand, Gina
Gershon is like fingernails on the blackboard as Connie, a stereotypical
big-haired hen-pecking Queens drama queen. The large ensemble of New York
character actors largely do their shticky thing playing colorful members of the
neighborhood, but Tom Wopat (the former Duke of Hazard turned Tony-nominated Broadway
mainstay) is the clear standout for his sensitive turn as Pipes.
