SOMEWHERE IN QUEENS - Mark Reviews Movies

Somewhere in Queens, Roadside Attractions/Lionsgate Films

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Review by Mark Dujsik | April 20, 2023

It's difficult to impossible to let go of the things that have wounded and still trouble you when they're right there in front of you every single day. That's the predicament for Leo (Ray Romano), a man just past middle age who has lived with or near family in the New York City borough of Queens for his entire life. When we meet the character in Somewhere in Queens, he's just a regular worker at a construction company owned by his family. At home, he's the comfortable husband to the only woman he has ever known and a caring father to an 18-year-old son on the same path as him.

Whatever Leo's life and relationships and career could have been at some point is probably gone now. This is likely it for the rest of that life, and that includes all of the misery and the embarrassment of feeling overlooked, misunderstood, and underappreciated by those closest to him.

In case it isn't clear—and maybe it shouldn't be—from that description, this is a comedy about Leo, as well as his immediate and extended family. The smart and oftentimes uncomfortable comedy comes from the lengths to which he will go to feel just a little bit better about himself, as well as to make sure that his teenage son never feels as bad as Leo does.

We can simultaneously laugh at and sympathize with the man for the first part, because it's so recognizable, but the real tricky element of this story comes with the second part. It's easy to feel a lot of admiration for Leo in his instinct to protect to his son. How much of that, though, is really sincere, and how much of it is Leo trying to protect the dreams he has for his son and how those goals make him feel like less of a failure?

Romano co-wrote and directed this film, which is filled with so much insight and discomfort that it's almost certainly the product of a lot of research or plenty of personal experience. Since his days as a standup comedian and on the long-running sitcom that bore his name, Romano's usual persona and comedic energy have stemmed from the sense that the man on the stage or in front of the camera doesn't exactly like himself. He channels that here to great effect, even if the rest of the story surrounding this character could have stood even a sliver of the perception Romano's screenplay (co-written by Mark Stegemann) and direction show toward Leo.

What we do get from the material, though, is still smartly and awkwardly funny, with more than a tinge of melancholy about the whole mess of Leo's sense of self-loathing and failure. The man certainly doesn't feel that way when he's watching his son, who goes exclusively by the nickname "Sticks" (Jacob Ward) on account of his long legs, play basketball.

This is a kid who spent most of his life being shy, anxious, and unable to speak in any social situation, but on the court with his high school team, he's a bona fide star. So, too, is Leo to some degree, because parents and students recognize him from having attended every single game Sticks has played. The crowd chants his name when Leo arrives with his wife Angela (Laurie Metcalf), and the look on Leo's face at that recognition suggests something other than pride in his son.

A couple of developments evolve Leo's thinking about Sticks, who's ready to start working at the family company after graduation, and the course the son's life could take. The first is when a talent scout for college basketball teams offers to put in a good word for Sticks at a smaller university, where a player with his level of talent could get a substantial scholarship. The second is Leo and Angela discovering that their son has a girlfriend. Her name is Dani (Sadie Stanley), and it's obvious that the young man has fallen hard for her.

She has plans to travel the country after graduating, though, and in order not to break poor Sticks' heart later, Dani breaks up with him. Leo convinces the young woman to lie to and keep up the appearance of dating his son—just until he tries out for a university in Philadelphia.

That's the extent of any sort of plotting, but in addition to the character's most questionable tactic of orchestrating an elaborate lie to spare his son of some heartbreak, most of the film digs into Leo's lack of self-worth, as well as how that comes from some of his relationships and sabotages them, too. Leo's own father (played by Tony Lo Bianco) is the tough but silent type, and while he ignores or chides Leo for the most part, the guy has to watch as his younger brother Frank (Sebastian Maniscalco) receives most of their old man's attention and all of his respect.

There's a bit more here, mainly the tenuous relationship between long-time couple Leo and Angela, a breast cancer survivor who is taken for granted by her husband, in what's the second most important and most underwritten through line in the film. Most of this, though, revolves around the little details, such as the way the tight-knit Italian-American family is constantly together at a banquet hall for all sorts of local milestones and Leo only being able to talk about matters of the heart by way of Rocky references.

The bigger details—about how Leo has long thought himself worthless, continually finds evidence of it in just about everything and everyone, and is desperately grasping to the one part of his life that gives him any kind of hope—are the ones that really stick. Somewhere in Queens gets at some very uneasy and, in Romano's hands, quite funny truths about this character.

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