Review: King of Staten Island
Saturday, June 13, 2020 at 9:30PM
by Tony Ruggio
The King of Staten Island is both typical Judd Apatow and a pretty subtle departure from the world he knows and has often depicted on screen. Make no mistake, it’s an overlong, meandering coming-of-story about a slacker who can’t get his head on straight until he does (very familiar), but it also features a deeper psychological profile than we’re used to seeing in Apatow's films.
Much like many of Apatow’s big-screen efforts, his latest uses the particular talents of a gifted comedian and crafts around them a semi-autobiographical tale of love and loss. Pete Davidson’s father was a fireman who tragically perished in the ashes of 9/11, and so it goes that Davidson is portraying a wayward 24 year-old named Scott who lives with an exhausted mother (Marisa Tomei) and his college-bound sister (Maude Apatow), and is still dealing with the loss of a fireman dad he knew only as a saint...
There’s a familiar, loose, improvisational quality to the comedic moments, when Apatow predictably allows his actors to free-associate and riff off one another without a script to tie them down. This has worked in the past with seminal films like The 40 Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up, Superbad, and less beloved titles like Funny People. Here, either the actors lack the improv skills of a Rogen or a Sandler or the director has decided that making people laugh wasn’t as important. An aspiring tattoo artist, Scott spends his days smoking pot with a gaggle of neighborhood miscreants and only one of them (Moises Arias) stands out as a likable, amusing presence. However, Staten Island may be the most accurate portrait of ADD ever put to film, with Scott even closing his eyes while driving to block out the boredom in the film’s opening scene.
Unlike Trainwreck and the rest, there are no celebrity cameos or constant pitter-patters about the entertainment industry. It’s a New York movie to its core, and Pete DavidsonBur’s distinct voice is found in the unlikeliest of grace notes: discussing one-percenter classism at a college party or expounding on his idea for a Frankenstein tattoo shop and restaurant. What sets Staten Island apart the most is its sense of place, firmly rooted in East Coast working class suburbia and blue collar storefronts. Bel Powley is perfectly cast as a Staten Island townie who believes in her little home’s potential to become the next big hood. She’s known Scott since they were kids and they have an odd friendship-with-benefits (and maybe more) that is quite endearing, a small love story that adds motivation and minor conflict to his inevitable character arc.
Most of the conflict centers on Mom’s new boyfriend Ray (Bill Burr), also a fireman, moving in to alter Scott’s unchanging, carefully curated slacker existence. Scott doesn’t like that she’s dating a fireman and his inability to process his father’s death results in familial chaos. Ray is a tightly wound ball of intensity, a livewire of pent-up anger and trigger-happy sarcasm that is casually funny and occasionally poignant in the hands of a stand-up comic like Burr. He and Davidson enjoy a properly uneasy chemistry, as their characters are at each other’s throats more than half the time.
King comes alive when these two are forced to get along in the aftermath of such chaos, the both of them at one point living together at the local firehouse among a group of firemen made up of Steve Buscemi, Jimmy Tatro (Bad Education), and Domenick Lombardozzi (The Irishman), among others. There Apatow finds the sense of camaraderie and charm that is sorely missing in some of those earlier scenes.
This is a comedy about a man-child, but also a young man suffering from childhood trauma and adulthood depression. Pete Davidson may yet have a robust career ahead, and at its best, The King of Staten Island is proof of his talents (and Burr’s, for that matter) more than it is a dramatic return to comedy for Judd Apatow. By now, I think the filmmaker oughta be known as a purveyor of humanist drama a la James L. Brooks instead of the much-ballyhooed king of R-rated comedy. B
Reader Comments (13)
How’s Marisa Tomei? I only want to watch for her.
Tomei could potentially get her 4th supporting actress nod. -- say that reviewer to get me to watch this because the trailer was cringe.
137 Minutes!!!???!!!
@ken s-I know. I used to like Judd Apatow but after the third act of Funny People and the horror that was This is 40, I realized that Apatow is trying to be James L. Brooks and he's succeeding in the fact that they're both smug in their humor, they don't know when to cut, and often put in some overblown sentimentality to the point that I become indifferent.
Huh?
Broadcast News is a masterpiece.
Wasting Tomei and Elswit on a Pete Davidson vehicle. On Judd Apatow. He's still trying to make these white boys happen a decade later. I see why Tomei says she regrets taking on mom roles.
Last year Pete Davidson starred in Big Time Adolescence. He played Zeke, an aimless man in his mid 20s who subsisted on drugs, fast food and tattoos.
In The King of Staten Island this year, the scenario isn't much different. Davidson plays Scott Carlin a man in his mid 20s who dreams of being a tattoo artist and circumvents his disappointment with drug abuse.
Davidson is a charming screen presence. He elicits laughter and pathos with aplomb. Because The King of Staten Island exploits the circumstances of Davidson's father's death as a firefighter, he gets a pass for repeating himself. That is not going to last. He cannot continue to explore the Peter Pan Syndrome without receiving some push back from the audience.
James L. Brooks is Woody Allen next to Judd Apatow. Apatow would never make something like Terms of Endearment or As Good As It Gets, I think. Not his style and he's not qualified.
I was going to rent this but then I saw it was $19.99 just got a rental lol. Um, no.
The image on the poster is an automatic no to me
The lack of compassion here for Davidson is a bit alarming.
@Ashley-Broadcast News is the only film of James L. Brooks that I liked. Everything else, no. I never cared for Terms of Endearment and I hated As Good As It Gets.
Thanks, Tony, for engaging with the film instead of just rejecting it out of hand for its subject matter or its filmmaker.
I have affection for Apatow. I can forgive a filmmaker that overindulges his actors because he loves them and because he cares about the characters, easier than I can forgive a director that marches them through a cookie cutter disposable product, even if that product runs a lean 95 minutes.