Review: "The King of Staten Island" (2020)

The "coming-of-age" story is an old one. A young man or woman, usually raised in a conservative, closed-knit family or community, goes out into the world and learns important Life Lessons. These include personal and professional triumphs and failures, romantic thrills and disapointments, and a transition from the innocence of childhood to the wisdom of adulthood. 

All of us come of age some way, somehow, and stories about it are great fodder for movies. 

Once upon a time childhood ended for most young people when they graduated from high school -- even in college, after the age of eighteen, people were considered adults. That's when they came of age! But in 21st century America, childhood and "coming of age" seems to last until people are thirty. More and more Americans in their twenties are living at home, delaying marriage and childhood (the marriage and birth rates have plunged in recent years), and treating adulthood as a disease to be avoided at all costs. 

That's a great way to say that this is exactly what the new movie The King of Staten Island is about -- a man of 24, living with his mother on Staten Island, unemployed and totally directionless, smoking tons of weed, hanging out with his posse of similar overgrown children, and hooking up with a girl who, despite her better judgement, loves this guy.

The guy in question is named Scott and he's played by Pete Davidson from Saturday Night Live. Based on Davidson's own life (whose from Staten Island and whose father died on 9/11), Scott is living through the trauma of his father's untimely death many years earlier, his sister who has now left home for college, and his widowed mother who is coming out of her shell and starting to date again. Scott is feeling left behind, miserable, but a series of events change the direction of his life and family -- giving this otherwise hopeless young man some hope for the future.

That's it. That's the whole plot of the movie.

And it is executed quite well. Davidson is a very good leading man, the supporting cast is just as interesting as him (especially Marissa Tomei who plays his mother), and there are lots of funny scenes. There are few movies about working class life, so it's great to see one when it comes along. The movie is directed by Judd Apatow quite well, and he gives it the humane, loving touch that he has in so many of his previous films. And yet, like his previous films, Apatow makes the movie too damn long. He tells an hour-and-a-half long story in almost two-and-a-half hours, there are lots of scenes that, while entertaining, are totally pointless, and, just when you think the move is over ... it goes on ... and on ... and on.

And, as the title suggests, it's a big Staten Island movie. The borough is shot and presented in a loving way, making it seem like a forgotten jewel beyond Manhattan and the rest of the city, the most loving portrait of the forgotten borough since Working Girl. At one point one of the characters observes that, one day, Staten Island will become a hot place to live like Brooklyn.

Enjoy.