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Movie Review: 'The King of Staten Island' is a Mixed Bag

Judd Apatow and Pete Davidson team for a refreshingly different yet overlong observation of an authentic life.

By Sean PatrickPublished 4 years ago 7 min read
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It’s tempting, as an observer and critic of culture, to attempt to place movies within large contexts. “What does this movie say about insert grand subject here?” That’s not a bad approach per se but when it is applied too liberally, as to ANY movie you see, it doesn’t work so well. Some movies don’t have that kind of ambition or intent. Not every movie is trying to say something important.

The King of Staten Island doesn’t have anything grand to say. There are no big ideas. The King of Staten Island is a modest observance of a very specific pseudo-life story, that of co-writer and star Pete Davidson. The King of Staten Island is not Davidson’s literal life story but it mirrors his directionless upbringing and his stumbling towards becoming a grown up and entering the world. It carries a metaphorical meaning for Davidson’s life more than a direct retelling of his life.

In The King of Staten Island, Pete Davidson plays Scott, a layabout, 24 year old, who lives in his mother’s basement, and chooses to be defined by the death of his father, a fireman, when he was 7 years old. Scott is not afraid whatsoever to use the death of his father as a good reason to stay in that basement, smoke weed and hang out with his friends. For her part, Scott’s mother, Margie (Marisa Tomei) has her own trauma related to the death of her husband and it is likely why she’s allowed Scott’s life to remain unchallenged.

An inciting incident arrives when Scott’s younger sister, Kelsey (Maude Apatow), graduates High School and is readying to leave for college. Margie has leaned on Kelsey as a friend and daughter. She sees herself in the successful upbringing of Kelsey and it allows her to overlook Scott’s stunted growth. With Kelsey gone, old pain resurfaces and when Scott screws up badly and harms a child, things go into greater upheaval.

I say that he harmed a child, Scott was practicing tattooing on the beach with his friends when this kid approached and asked for a tattoo. Idiotically, Scott agreed, and the child immediately regretted the decision and ended up screaming in pain and running for home with a small line on his arm. The boy’s father is the big, challenging element of The King of Staten Island. Comedian Bill Burr plays Ray, the father, and when he comes to confront Scott, he meets Margie and is smitten.

Without telling Scott, Margie begins to date Ray and her life begins to improve. Margie grows happier and more independent and finally she will develop the courage to confront Scott and force a change in his life. I will leave you there because there is so much more to it than that. I could describe the entirety of The King of Staten Island and I could not spoil it for you. The movie is not plot driven, it’s all about how you observe the lives at play in the movie.

The King of Staten Island was directed and co-written by Judd Apatow but it is nothing like anything Apatow has directed before. Apatow’s movies have an insular, almost sitcom-like feel with navel-gazing characters who are lovable and fun to be around and listen to. The King of Staten Island is Apatow outside of his comfort zone and he appears to struggle trying to bring his style to bear on an unwieldy, messy, and shapeless type of story and approach to comedy.

The King of Staten Island is the coming together of Apatow and Pete Davidson’s sensibilities and they do clash. You can sense Apatow wanting to bring a more familiar and relatable, mainstream quality, to the story. Davidson on the other hand, not that he’s more of a pure artist per se, but he doesn’t seem to give a damn whether we are entertained or not. His performance is confrontational without being particularly passionate about it.

It’s a strange and often failing quality. At times, the lackadaisical qualities of The King of Staten Island had me reaching for my phone to think about what was happening on Twitter or whether my latest Amazon order had shipped. Some scenes feel longer than necessary and when a joke that is more clearly to Apatow’s sensibilities arises, it’s funny but then it lingers as if Davidson were compromising to allow for the joke.

I don’t sense that Davidson and Apatow were clashing on set or had disparately different visions of the movie but perhaps there is a generational difference that might explain the occasional awkwardness of The King of Staten Island. Where Apatow has a sense for wanting to make sure we, audience, are having a good time, I had the feeling that Pete Davidson couldn’t care less about whether we are laughing or not.

That clash of people pleasing director and more self focused star works to give The King of Staten Island a fresh feel, if not as many laughs as we might be looking for from an Apatow movie. The King of Staten Island has an authenticity to it that I find very appealing. However, the apathy of Scott as a character is often overwhelming and I couldn’t help but long for even the most awkwardly forced bit of humor to break the monotony of Scott’s quest to do as little as possible.

The King of Staten Island is a mixed bag. I like a lot of what the movie is going for. I like the fresh approach to stoner comedy, one that recognizes that stoners aren’t always having a comedy good time. Sometimes stoners are just sitting on the coach existing in each other’s presence, waiting for life to make them do something. The characters who make up Scott’s circle are affable but they are not the colorful likes of Jason Segal, Jonah Hill, or Jay Baruchel from Knocked Up who always seemed to have something quite funny to say.

The King of Staten Island is a bit moodier than you expect from an Apatow movie and that is an evolution of his work and a reflection of his partnership with Davidson who himself is a rather moody character. Davidson is a highly unique comic presence. Davidson crafts a version of himself as this character that is unpredictable, he has a demeanor that can go from affable to frustrated to volatile. He’s never violent, that might require too much energy, but when he’s fiery, he has the ability to hold a moment hostage with his hostility.

I liked the way Scott stands astride the gap between man-child and manhood. He’s not a Peter Pan type. Unlike Seth Rogan in Knocked Up who you can sense has intentionally held himself back from taking on adult responsibilities while being fully capable of them, Scott appears legitimately stunted by genuine trauma. I honestly feared that maybe he wasn’t capable of the typicalities of adult life and that gives him a pathetic quality.

I fear for the Scott’s of the world who suffer trauma at an early point in life before they developed the tools to handle that trauma. His mother enabled that in him but the movie never blames anyone other than Scott for his failings. That makes him both the victim and the villain of his own life. That is a fascinating dichotomy even if it doesn’t amount to much in the way of big drama or big comedy.

The messy, sloppy authenticity of The King of Staten Island is the film’s blessing and its curse. On the one hand, the film feels fresh and authentic to real life. On the other hand, real life lacks the rhythm and excitement of a well told story. Life has downtime and not everyone has the right one liner at hand to make things fun. Life doesn’t have an editor to get us on to the next bit of excitement. The King of Staten Island is not exactly as dull as the mundane life of a stoner stuck in arrested development but in being true to that idea, attempts to make it more typical of a film comedy feel awkward and as a movie it stagnates.

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About the Creator

Sean Patrick

Hello, my name is Sean Patrick He/Him, and I am a film critic and podcast host for the I Hate Critics Movie Review Podcast I am a voting member of the Critics Choice Association, the group behind the annual Critics Choice Awards.

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