B-

There’s an underlying sweetness to the 1950s period drama writer-director Raymond De Felitta has fashioned from his own family history; though the script makes fairly predictable points about outgrowing the biases of one’s narrow perspective and taking chances to achieve happiness, it dramatizes them with some nuance and, for the most part, without pushing too hard. The picture also effectively captures the Staten Island atmosphere of the time, and the leads are extremely likable. Many viewers, therefore, will simply embrace “Two Family House” for its low-key charm and its ultimately endearing message of following your dream, seizing love when it hits you, and escaping prejudice. But despite its very real virtues, the picture ultimately proves a trifle flat and obvious; it may be founded on a real story, but as a cinematic structure it ends up feeling more than a little prefabricated. (The device of having the story narrated from the future by a secondary character is a particular mistake, since it telegraphs the outcome and, in any event, makes overly explicit what the film itself should tell us more subtly.)

The story centers on Buddy Visalo, a salt-of-the-earth sort of guy played by Michael Ripsoli (whose expressions and attitudes often make him look a bit like a considerably slimmed-down John Goodman). Though extremely Italian, Buddy has a lot in common with one of his New York contemporaries, Jackie Gleason’s Ralph Kramden: he’s gone through a succession of money-making schemes in the hopes of becoming his own boss, but they’ve never succeeded–much to the chagrin (but also, oddly enough, the satisfaction) of his wife Estelle (Katherine Narducci). Unlike Ralph’s Alice, Estelle has been playing on her husband’s penchant for failure to keep him in thrall (they’re even still living with her parents, something she seems to prefer); it actually pleases her to impress upon the poor schlub that he’s a mediocre sort who should give up all his hopes. Nonetheless, as the picture opens Buddy has hatched another plan: he’s buying a run-down old house in an Irish neighborhood, intending to use the upper floor as their new home while converting the main level into a bar where he can provide the entertainment himself (a good singer, he was once offered an audition by Arthur Godfrey, declining only at Estelle’s insistence). His wife goes along with the idea, believing that its inevitable failure will dash Buddy’s dreams once and for all. But fate intervenes: an Irish couple living upstairs, brutish Jim O’Neary (Kevin Conway) and his pregnant wife Mary (Kelly Macdonald), refuse to leave. When, however, Mary gives birth to a half-Negro child, Jim abruptly abandons her. Buddy, though pushing ahead with his renovation project, feels strangely protective of the woman and her child, and secretly helps her financially. In time, the two develop a relationship that threatens Buddy’s marriage, his plans, and his entire web of neighborhood friendships, as well as his conventional ideas about right and wrong.

Nothing that happens in “Two Family House” is all that surprising, but for the most part it’s reasonably convincing because De Felitta handles the material with a lighter touch than might have been expected, especially given the opportunity for exaggeration that the strong ethnic background invites. (He’s especially successful in treating the prejudices the locals express, portraying them as realistically offhanded rather than clumsily emphatic.) The leads, moreover, possess genuine charm. Rispoli manages to keep Buddy both sympathetic and complex, and Macdonald does a nicely shaded turn, beautifully balancing her character’s strength and vulnerability. The supporting cast, however, isn’t quite so successful. Narducci’s Estelle never degenerates into a mere shrew, but her feelings remain more than a little opaque, and Conway overdoes things as Mary’s dissolute hubby. Among the colorful (sometimes, unhappily, exaggeratedly so) neighborhood types, viewers of “The Sopranos,” in which both Rispoli and Narducii have appeared, will also recognize Vinny Pastore as Angelo, the gruff, opinionated owner of the bar Buddy frequents with his local friends.

One has to admire “Two Family House” for avoiding the gross sentimentality that its story could have invited, and for the genuine warmth that Rispoli and Macdonald generate. But recognizing its virtues shouldn’t blind one to its failings. De Felitta has crafted a nice, if sometimes overly deliberate movie that conceals its manipulative character more successfully than most, but can’t entirely escape its shadow.