The King of Staten Island (Judd Apatow, 2020)

I'll get over you, I know I will / though you messed me up by dyin'

I'll get over you, I know I I will / I'm the king of Staten Island...

With apologies to Go West, that tune has been rattling around my brain for weeks. Anyway, I see that opinion is rather split regarding Apatow's latest, and I can certainly see why. If we accept that this is a writer-director who simply does a particular type of thing (stories about twenty-something white guys who need to be shaken out of their arrested development), then he has arguably deepened his shtick by adapting the Pete Davidson story. Davidson, an actor-comedian who has struggled quite publicly with mental illness and the trauma of losing his father on 9/11, is clearly not just some guy who needs to "grow up." He is a thorny, difficult, self-sabotaging subject who needs to climb out of a very deep hole, and our sympathy for him doesn't make him any more likable. In a lot of ways, this is the main theme of Staten Island -- the challenge of loving people who are not well.

I've seen some reviews complaining that this film is shapeless and meandering, but I would argue that everything that Apatow does to give Staten Island shape works to its detriment. The emotional messiness of Scott (Davidson) and his relationships with his mom (Marisa Tomei), sister (Maude Apatow), sort-of girlfriend (Bel Powley), and his mom's new boyfriend (an impressive Bill Burr) is consistently undercut by cheap plot contrivance and the attempts to make the movie go places. The narrative device by which Ray (Burr) is introduced -- an incomprehensibly stupid act by Scott, followed by an implausible apology / forgiveness by Ray -- would not pass muster in Screenwriting 101. 

But perhaps most egregious is the use of the pharmacy heist as the way to dramatize Scott's need to break away from his loser friends. It's not just that it's tonally off -- a sudden shootout in the middle of a loping character study, as if Apatow were bitten by the Desplechin bug. But the aftermath is blithely unconcerned with race. (Scott's African-American friend, played by Lou Wilson, is lost in the prison system, while his two white buddies are accounted for.) In fact, this is such a startling misstep, I almost respect it. Apatow could have held Staten Island back for post-"I Can't Breathe" reshoots, but instead he threw it out there, as if to display his brazen white privilege. When other Hollywood types are embarrassing themselves with their mealy-mouthed liberal displays, The King of Staten Island is refreshingly self-indicting.