DAVIDSON TRIES TO GROW UP IN ‘STATEN ISLAND’
PETE DAVIDSON STARS IN “THE KING OF STATEN ISLAND.”
Most of America met comedian Pete Davidson through “Saturday Night Live,” where he joined the cast in 2014 as the resident goofy younger brother, a rawboned, coathanger of a kid breastfed on junk food, hip-hop, video games, endless hours of bad TV in the basement and way, way too much weed.
But it wasn’t entirely an act, even as it turned him into a celebrity dating the likes of Ariana Grande and Kate Beckinsale. It felt like this was the real Pete, laying it all bare under the guise of “SNL” humor, whether he was dealing with going sober or his well-documented mental-health issues. Offstage, he had grown up in the shadow of the death of his firefighter father on 9/11.
Now, all of this is the jumpingoff point for his starring-role film debut in “The King of Staten Island,” a sweetly amusing, semiautobiographical, late-stage comingof-age story co-written by Davidson and directed by Judd Apatow (“The 40-Year-Old Virgin,” “Trainwreck”). The film begins streaming June 12 through videoon-demand.
Davidson is Scott Carlin, a 20-something Staten Island guy living with his nurse mom, Margie (Marisa Tomei), and the memory of a fireman dad who died on the job in a hotel fire. They maintain a shrine to him in the living room.
Yet Scott, a would-be cartoonist with vague dreams of becoming a tattoo artist, spends most of his time hanging out with his vegetative buddies Oscar (Ricky Velez), Igor (Moises Arias), Richie (Lou Wilson) and his best friend with benefits, Kelsey (Bel Powley). All are free from that nagging thing called ambition, except for Kelsey, who fantasizes about somehow making Staten Island hip and desirable like Brooklyn and who wants a deeper relationship with Scott. But Scott, who prefers lethargy to intimacy, is not having it.
Scott is shaken out of his comfort zone when mom finally gets a new man in her life, Ray (Bill Burr), a cranky, no-nonsense divorcee who also happens to be a fireman. They want him to finally do something with himself, to which Scott responds, “I have Crohn’s disease. There’s something wrong with me up here. What are you trying to do to me? Haven’t I been through enough?”
It’s at moments like these that Scott and Pete feel inseparable.
At 136 minutes, “The King of Staten Island” takes too long to get where it’s going (Apatow’s films are always around the twohour mark, as if he’s selling them by the yard). But it’s a good-natured enough journey, with enough good performances — including Steve Buscemi as Ray’s boss — to make it a trip worth taking.
And Davidson holds it all together with a sense of vulnerability under a layer of slacker nonchalance. Though since he’s basically playing himself, it remains to be seen what else he can do.
While it’s tempting to say that Davidson shouldn’t leave his “Night” job — rumors keep swirling that he may be heading for the exits — “The King of Staten Island” makes it clear that he just might have a future outside the confines of sketch television.
Either way, he’s not going back into the basement.