Review: "The King of Staten Island" is a Perfect Exploration of Millennial Ennui

Pete Davidson

On the surface, it's hard to see why director Judd Apatow chose to land his latest directorial effort on the shoulder of Pete Davidson. At best, the amount of marijuana smoke flowing from his mouth could rival Seth Rogen in his prime. You can smell it leeching through the frame as a tattooed 24-year-old man-child wanders life aimlessly. Those who have followed the comedian's public persona will find it difficult to find any nuance in his small acting career, mostly getting by on the charming loser persona who means good but couldn't deliver on the simplest of promise. It's the type of mentality that you would never expect Apatow, one of studio comedy's premier voices in scouting future megastars, to have when choosing the unproven, untapped potential of Davidson.

Much like Rogen before, the collaboration with Apatow has turned out to be the best thing that happened to their respective careers. This is the director feeling electrified, finding ways to take the stoner archetype further than he ever could with Knocked Up. Here is a filmmaker who has matured into a father and has a cautious eye out for the next generation, desiring to explore their personal anxieties and understand why this new generation is so depressed. Given Davidson's openness in his stand-up, it suddenly begins to make sense why he was chosen for The King of Staten Island: a pseudo-biographical film that finally realizes the comedian's potential while also producing a film that explores millennial ennui with clarity and heart not often seen before. While it may have rocky patches (it is an Apatow movie after all), it's one of the most honest and focused works that the director has ever made. After decades of being compared to James L. Brooks, this may be the first time that he's matched his underlying charm. 

Staten Island exists in a state of stunted maturity. Compared to the other Burroughs of New York, it's a place where nobody expects you to be a success story. All you can really do is look across the Bay at the other cities, seeing greater potential outside of your grasp. You can fantasize about them, but this proverbial train track indicates a division that will come up at several points throughout the story. Sure, Staten Island isn't a ghetto in the way that Detroit is, but based on the collectives that Scott Carlin (Davidson) hang out with, they're definitely outcasts, filled with their own frustrations. For some, it's getting a bad tattoo from Scott that manages to warp self-portraits into David Lynch nightmares. For others, it's the sense of inadequacy that they feel in their personal relationships, unable to feel a personal form of love.

When his sister Claire (Maude Apatow) goes to college, it becomes clear how much divide there is between Scott and his mother Margie (Marisa Tomei). These two spend more time worrying about Scott than Scott does as he wanders around, selling drugs, and barely understanding how to do a busboy job. He passes off most of his problems on his ADHD and Crohn's Disease, choosing to ignore it all with a drag off of his vape pen while SpongeBob Squarepants plays in the background. He is an aimless high school dropout, and it's easy to argue that this unpleasant character doesn't deserve to have his story explored. There is no reason that we should care about the family screw-up. 

He is on the wrong side of the tracks of his own life, living in a past where he is perpetually 17 years younger, mourning the death of his firefighting father. It's clear that he's using tattoo art as an escape, claiming that the pain is enough to make him feel better. He has these self-destructive tendencies that numb the inner pain by shifting his focus to other things. Over the course of the remaining film, he will learn how to deal with the emotional pain in healthier ways. He will stop yelling at Margie for dating a loudmouth firefighter named Ray Bishop (Bill Burr) and realize that he's not really mad at Ray. He's mad at himself, incapable of moving forward because he fears that life is cyclical and that to achieve any status of love is to set one up for disappointment.

One can easily play a drinking game with the amount of jokes and references to death scattered around this story. Scott is in a perpetual state of concern that death will enter his life if he's not careful. He hates the idea of firefighters having children because they may die and leave behind orphans. There's clearly some projection as he's seen having these conversations with NYFD veterans at a baseball game, feeling insecure as he finally makes clear a subtext he's been hiding underneath a cloud of smoke, living in a haze because his friends would never understand his point. He is stunted because he clearly never had that figure to talk to that could make sense of it. Even worse, he doesn't realize the pain he causes Margie and leaves her finding love from people who are less distant despite Scott living off of her couch.

The one thing that should be noted is that while this is an Apatow film down to the patented supporting cast of amazing guest stars, it feels like it would be a great disservice to call this a comedy. There are jokes and the familiar riffing informs character traits throughout the film. But it doesn't feel like Apatow is as obsessed with the funniest gags this time around. He's learned to emphasize character, allowing Davidson's insecurity to be reflective in every line he speaks. As a result, he has produced arguably three of the greatest performances in his career for Pete Davidson, Marisa Tomei, and Bill Burr. Together the trio manages to reflect family dysfunction that comes with a lack of support friends when communication and loyalty aren't accepted. It leads to some solid emotional beats, and you get the sense that this story means the world to Davidson. He couldn't screw it up because it was a story about his own father, reflecting an absence that many understand.

It doesn't seem likely to change Davidson's image entirely, but in this moment of raw honesty, it feels like Apatow has found one of his most efficient muses. Sure he's nowhere near as funny or consistent as Rogen, but there is a sense for the first time that this manic depressive is deserving of something greater in a career. If anything, he knows how to find the catharsis in The King of Staten Island, where his torso of goofy tattoos is his own perverse armor from deeper confrontation. They're more likely to ask about his Jaws tattoo before wondering about his father, the pain, or why he is a high school dropout who hasn't done anything with his life. 

While the back half is meandering at points, it's a journey into self-worth is the endearing conclusion that audiences have been expecting. Along with some memorable turns, it's a film that finds the typical Apatow risks of being allowed to have dark dramatic turns that break up the comedy and add context to the need to find more value in Staten Island than this wasteland that has cheap housing. As Scott's girlfriend Kelsey (Bel Powley) puts it, she wants to go into real estate to prove how much worth this city has. This is just one of the many great symbols that Davidson put into the script, reflecting how the struggle for self-worth is as much an insular experience as it is the place where you live. Why would you want to be the king of Staten Island? It seems like a trash heap. Then again, it's all how you choose to see it, and by spending time with these people Apatow shows humanity in every characters' life. 

The King of Staten Island is a wonderful surprise, where Apatow manages to create a feel-good story that takes his man-child trope to something more caring and exploratory. Whereas he used them as vehicles for R-Rated sex jokes in Knocked Up, he's now using them as character development and plot beats that define something richer of character. While it doesn't necessarily prove Davidson's potential to do well without Apatow, there is reason to believe that he's at least in tune with his emotions, able to explore the struggle of millennial ennui with a stronger focus than just about any other screenwriter working. If he can find new ways to spin the story of the stoner on the couch, he may be able to become the next Rogen. For now, he's showing promise for the first time in his career, and it's endearing to know that he does it in the most ironic way possible.