Likeable King a letdown
The King of Staten Island (R16, 136 mins) Directed by Judd Apatow Reviewed by Graeme Tuckett ★★★ 1⁄2
Staten Island is only an eightkilometre ferry ride from Lower Manhattan, but it feels like one-part sleepy fishing town, and one-part hardscrabble American suburbia.
That lack of identity and its uncertain future maybe make Staten the perfect setting for Judd Apatow’s latest interrogation of emotionally stunted men and the women who tolerate them.
Apatow (The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up, Funny People ) is collaborating here with Saturday
alumni Pete Davidson, in a loosely autobiographical riff on Davidson’s life.
As the eternal stoner Scott, Davidson is authentic and believable as the 24-year-old manchild, still living in his mom’s basement, getting through his days in a cloud of weed.
Scott dreams of being a tattoo artist, but his doodles on his friends don’t really hold much promise, even as they set up some of the best jokes The King of Staten
has to tell.
Scott lives with Crohn’s disease, a probable dose of ADHD and an always-present depression that manifests itself in every self-deprecating and detached exchange he has with his likeably self-aware collection of friends, his off-and-on-again not-girlfriend, his high-achieving sister and his mum.
Haunting the family is the memory of dad and husband Stan, who was a fire officer and who died on the job when Scott was 7.
When mum Margie – played by the always startlingly good Marisa Tomei – starts dating a man Scott thinks he has a reason to dislike, the woozy equilibrium of his life goes off-centre, and Scott will finally have to take some responsibility for his own circumstances.
As usual with Apatow, the director’s need for a conventionally tidy and happy conclusion is at odds with the uncertainty and unpredictability of real life.
As someone must surely already have said: a crowd-pleaser can be a good film, but never be a great one.
And so it is with
The performances are sharp and watchable, the setting is perfectly captured – cinematographer Robert Elswit is a true industry legend.
He shot Magnolia and
Will Be Blood, among dozens of other credits – and the writing is mostly warm and witty.
But, on the downside, that 136-minute running time is unforgivably baggy, and Apatow’s insistence on a lessons-and-hugs finale undercuts everything that has gone before.
It all adds up to a film that is very easy to like, but maybe not one you will really love.