My Review of "The King of Staten Island"

The King of Staten Island is a movie that came out in 2020 that some believe is very close to the true life story of the lead actor Pete Davidson. You have to go into this movie in a certain mindset in order to enjoy this movie though. The main character isn't the most likeable person. Although the people all around him are extremely likeable. It made me kind of pissed that he treats the people around him so horribly.

The movie starts off with the main character Scott driving down a street. What happens absolutely had me livid. I guess he's either high or going through something and just closes his eyes and speeds up. With no regard for whoever is around him he just continually accelerates down the street. I've been in a few accidents because of absent minded drivers so this really had me going. He finally opens up his eyes only to see that there's an accident in front of him and he's able to brake but he loses control of his car. Swerving out of traffic he corrects his car only to hit another car which causes another car accident. He mutters sorry and drives off. I couldn't believe how absent minded and irresponsible these scenes were but I understood that this is a reality in everyday life.

The movie continues on like this. We next see Scott hanging out with his friends watching a TV smoking weed. He then has sex with one of his friends and tries to keep it under wraps because he doesn't know what he wants. I think he wants sympathy from the viewers by letting us all know he has self hate issues and feels apathetic to everything around him.

Unfortunately there's not much anyone around him can do to help him because he doesn't really listen to anyone but himself. He constantly reminds everyone that he has had it tough growing up because his father was absent in his life. We later learn that there was more to his father than he thought but as a viewer I couldn't really understand where he's coming from. I guess everyone has it different but he's got so many opportunities around him and he's so clueless of it.

Again this movie is grounded on very realistic situations happening in our everyday lives. A lot of people feel victimized no matter what you tell them. As a person that never grew up with the luxuries that this guy had in his life I had a really tough time to feel apathetic to his character. The thing is this isn't about what had happened to him in the past.

He has mental health issues and we learn more as the movie progresses. I know what they were going with this movie but I could see how people can get really annoyed by this movie just because of Scott's character. Throughout the runtime of the movie I just felt sorry for all of the people that surrounded him. I have no idea how they were able to deal with his antics for as long as they have. For family it's even tougher because you can't just simply throw someone out on the street because they refuse to work on themselves.

The movie is supposed to be a comedy and I guess there are a number of some funny scenes but because it's so grounded on reality some of it was pretty tough to laugh at. This movie was a good way of giving people awareness of people with the same conditions as Scott.

Unfortunately there's not much for us to do to help people like Scott. They have to go through their journey but from the movie it looks like they're just content to get high and forget about the world. How do you really fix people like that? The solutions in this movie seem somewhat unlikely but I went with it because it's so much crap to take to not have a resolution at the end.

Overall, I was able to enjoy some of the movie but only because of the surrounding characters in the movie. The main character's obtuse and self absorbed persona took me outside of the movie at times. I didn't want to watch it at some points because he was such a toxic person. For people that have toxic people in their lives this is definitely a tough movie to watch. I have to give this movie a 6.5 out of 10. You better be in a certain mode of thought to enjoy this movie.