''Brooklyn Lobster'' is a 2005 American
drama film
In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. Drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular super-g ...
presented by
Martin Scorsese
Martin Charles Scorsese ( , ; born November 17, 1942) is an American film director, producer, screenwriter and actor. Scorsese emerged as one of the major figures of the New Hollywood era. He is the recipient of List of awards and nominatio ...
and written, produced, and directed by Kevin Jordan. The screenplay is based on Jordan's family's efforts to salvage their
Brooklyn
Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...
-based
wholesale
Wholesaling or distributing is the sale of goods or merchandise to retailers; to industrial, commercial, institutional or other professional business users; or to other wholesalers (wholesale businesses) and related subordinated services. In ...
and
retail
Retail is the sale of goods and services to consumers, in contrast to wholesaling, which is sale to business or institutional customers. A retailer purchases goods in large quantities from manufacturers, directly or through a wholesaler, and t ...
seafood operation when the bank
defaulted on a loan they had secured to finance a restaurant extension to the business.
Plot
Frank Giorgio's life is thrown into chaos when the bank that loaned him money for a restaurant addition to his seafood business folds and the
FDIC
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) is one of two agencies that supply deposit insurance to depositors in American depository institutions, the other being the National Credit Union Administration, which regulates and insures credi ...
demands he repay the loan in full immediately. With the threat of a public
auction
An auction is usually a process of buying and selling goods or services by offering them up for bids, taking bids, and then selling the item to the highest bidder or buying the item from the lowest bidder. Some exceptions to this definition ex ...
looming, the very proud and stubborn Frank, his family, and eccentric crew rally to save the business.
Frank's son Michael, who works in the tech world of
Seattle
Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...
, and his girlfriend Kerry return home for
Christmas
Christmas is an annual festival commemorating Nativity of Jesus, the birth of Jesus, Jesus Christ, observed primarily on December 25 as a religious and cultural celebration among billions of people Observance of Christmas by country, around t ...
and are dragged into the family drama. Michael's childhood home has been sold, and his mother Maureen, who has separated from Frank and is hoping to establish her own identity apart from the business that has consumed her life, is scheduled to move into a rental house after the holidays. Over the course of two weeks, Michael finds himself sleeping on a pull-out couch with his father in Frank's office, catching wandering lobster crates in the bay, and trying to mend his relationship with Kerry after his father assaults her uncle. Meanwhile, his sister Lauren, who has worked with her father since graduating from college, is striving to keep the lines of communication open among all the family members.
In the end, Frank's longtime customer and friend Bill Lau offers the highest bid on the property, with the idea he and Frank will complete construction of the restaurant and operate it as partners.
Production
In a bonus feature on the
DVD
The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kind ...
release of the film, Kevin and Darren Jordan discuss family events that inspired them to develop the film. In 1938, their grandfather established a seafood business on
Bleecker Street
Bleecker Street is an east–west street in the New York City borough of Manhattan. It is most famous today as a Greenwich Village nightclub district. The street connects a neighborhood today popular for music venues and comedy, but which was ...
in
Manhattan
Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...
, and later moved it to a waterfront location in the
Sheepshead Bay
Sheepshead, Sheephead, or Sheep's Head, may refer to:
Fish
* ''Archosargus probatocephalus'', a medium-sized saltwater fish of the Atlantic Ocean
* Freshwater drum, ''Aplodinotus grunniens'', a medium-sized freshwater fish of North and Central Am ...
section of Brooklyn where, under the name Jordan's Lobster Dock, it became a popular local landmark. Their father Bill decided to expand the operation by adding a restaurant, but midway through construction the bank that loaned him money to finance the project failed, and the FDIC demanded full repayment of the loan, placing the family in a financial bind.
The film was shot in less than five weeks on the actual site of the Jordan business, as well as in
Chinatown
A Chinatown () is an ethnic enclave of Chinese people located outside Greater China, most often in an urban setting. Areas known as "Chinatown" exist throughout the world, including Europe, North America, South America, Asia, Africa and Austra ...
and
Rockville Centre
Rockville Centre, commonly abbreviated as RVC, is an incorporated village located in the Town of Hempstead in Nassau County, on the South Shore of Long Island, in New York, United States. The population was 24,023 at the 2010 census.
Histor ...
. All members of Jordan's immediate family had
cameo roles
A cameo role, also called a cameo appearance and often shortened to just cameo (), is a brief appearance of a well-known person in a work of the performing arts. These roles are generally small, many of them non-speaking ones, and are commonly eit ...
.
The film premiered at the
Toronto International Film Festival
The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF, often stylized as tiff) is one of the largest publicly attended film festivals in the world, attracting over 480,000 people annually. Since its founding in 1976, TIFF has grown to become a permane ...
and was shown at the
Hamptons International Film Festival
The Hamptons International Film Festival (HIFF) is an international film festival founded in 1992, by Joyce Robinson. The festival has since taken place every year in East Hampton, New York. It is usually an annual five-day event in mid-October a ...
, the Avignon Film Festival, and the
Bahamas International Film Festival
The Bahamas International Film Festival (BIFF) is a non-profit film festival held in the Bahamas. Open to both locals and international visitors, the festival was founded by Leslie Vanderpool in 2004.
BIFF also hosts a youth film workshop that a ...
. It went into theatrical release in the US on November 4, 2005, and earned $11,729 in two theaters on its opening weekend. It eventually grossed a total of $138,267.
Cast
*
Danny Aiello
Daniel Louis Aiello Jr. () (June 20, 1933 – December 12, 2019) was an American actor. He appeared in numerous motion pictures, including ''The Godfather Part II'' (1974), ''The Front'' (1976), ''Once Upon a Time in America'' (1984), ''Hide in ...
as Frank Giorgio
*
Jane Curtin
Jane Therese Curtin (born September 6, 1947) is an American actress and comedian. First coming to prominence as an original cast member on the hit TV comedy series ''Saturday Night Live'' in 1975, she went on to win back-to-back Emmy Awards for ...
as Maureen Giorgio
*Daniel Sauli as Michael Giorgio
*
Heather Burns
Heather Burns (born April 7, 1975) is an American actress, known for her role as Miss Rhode Island Cheryl Frasier in the 2000 film '' Miss Congeniality'' and its 2005 sequel, '' Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous''. Her other film appearan ...
as Kerry Miller
*
Marisa Ryan
Marisa Ryan (born November 20, 1974) is an American actress, best known for her role as Nina Grabowski in the HBO series ''Sex and the City'', as Elizabeth Cooper-MacGillis in the CBS sitcom ''Major Dad'' (1989–1993), and as Abby Bernstein in ...
as Lauren Georgio Wallace
*
Ian Kahn
Ian R. Kahn (born April 21, 1972) is an American stage, television actor and podcast host, perhaps best known for his roles on '' Turn: Washington's Spies'', ''Dawson's Creek'', ''Bull'', ''The Unusuals'' and ''As the World Turns''. He portrayed ...
as Justin Wallace
*Rick Aiello as Tommy
*
Sam Freed
Sam Freed (born August 29, 1948) is an American actor who has performed on Broadway and television and in movies. His first major regular role on television was as Bob Barsky in the last three seasons of '' Kate & Allie''. In the short-lived seri ...
as James Miller
*
Barbara Garrick
Barbara Garrick is an American actress. Garrick has appeared on stage, television and in film.
Life and career
Garrick was born in Los Angeles, California. A graduate of the Juilliard School of Drama, she has several stage credits, including ' ...
as Lynn Miller
*Henry Yuk as Bill Lau
*
Tom Mason as Chuck Miller
*
Stephen Schnetzer
Stephen Paul Schnetzer (born June 11, 1948) is an American actor.
Life and career
Schnetzer, who is of German descent, was born in Canton, Massachusetts, the son of Thomas A. Schnetzer. His mother was a war bride from Algeria. He attended Cath ...
as Mr. Hammon
Critical reception
On
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
, ''Brooklyn Lobster'' has a 44% approval rating, based on 16 reviews, with an average rating of 5.66/10. On
Metacritic
Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...
, the film has a score of 55 out of 100, based on 11 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert (; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American film critic, film historian, journalist, screenwriter, and author. He was a film critic for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, Ebert beca ...
of the ''
Chicago Sun-Times
The ''Chicago Sun-Times'' is a daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Since 2022, it is the flagship paper of Chicago Public Media, and has the second largest circulation among Chicago newspapers, after the ''Chicago T ...
'' said the film "has a spontaneous, confident realism about it" and added, "''Brooklyn Lobster'' is a sweet and touching film, worth a visit."
Michael Wilmington of the ''
Chicago Tribune
The ''Chicago Tribune'' is a daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States, owned by Tribune Publishing. Founded in 1847, and formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" (a slogan for which WGN radio and television ar ...
'' awarded the film three out of four stars, calling it "the kind of smart, realistic
indie
Indie is a short form of "independence" or "independent"; it may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media
Gaming
*Independent video game development, video games created without financial backing from large companies
*Indie game, any game (board ...
family drama the movies should give us more often, just as they should more often offer performances as full-blooded and rich as Aiello's and Curtin's here."
Joe Leydon
Joseph Patrick Michael Leydon (born August 22, 1952) is an American film critic and historian. A critic and correspondent for ''Variety'' since 1990, he is the author of ''Joe Leydon's Guide to Essential Movies You Must See'' (Michael Wiese Prod ...
of ''
Variety
Variety may refer to:
Arts and entertainment Entertainment formats
* Variety (radio)
* Variety show, in theater and television
Films
* ''Variety'' (1925 film), a German silent film directed by Ewald Andre Dupont
* ''Variety'' (1935 film), ...
'' said, "Despite worthy contributions on both sides of the camera, ''Brooklyn Lobster'' comes across primarily as a showcase for Danny Aiello in a powerhouse performance . . . Character's multiple mid-life crises could make this genuinely engaging drama especially appealing to older viewers".
References
External links
*{{IMDb title, 0401591
2005 films
American drama films
2005 drama films
Drama films based on actual events
Films set in Brooklyn
Films shot in New York City
2000s English-language films
2000s American films