Judd Apatow has built a career over making films about men who refuse to grow up, but as time has passed, there’s been a notable shift in his approach. If you look at Knocked Up and his latest film, The King Of Staten Island beside one another, you can see that despite a similar crude exploration of arrested development in their leads, his approach more recently has taken a more somber and mature approach, veering into territory that I would compare to someone like James L. Brooks. While the results are somewhat mixed, I’m very fascinated by his newer creative impulses.
With The King Of Staten Island, Apatow collaborates with Pete Davidson similarly to the way he did with Amy Schumer when he directed her in 2015 with Trainwreck. Apatow, Davidson, and Dave Sirus wrote the film, which is loosely based on Davidson’s experience, playing as a version of himself named Scott. It follows his struggles to get his life together, spending most of his time either smoking pot, hanging out with his friends, both, and generally being stuck at home with his mom, Margie (Marisa Tomei), a nurse who starts dating a firefighter, Ray (Bill Burr), much to Scott’s dismay. After all, his father was a firefighter who died on the job many years ago.
When I saw Big Time Adolescence earlier this year, I found myself endeared to Davidson’s weird charms, having had very little exposure to him prior, and in that film, he was a supporting role. Here, essentially playing a very similar type of hopeless loser character, but now as the lead. His presence is a harsh and quite aggressive one, but I’m happy to say his charisma still shines through here. Obviously, the story is more personal this time, so the film offers a much more empathetic perspective on his character than it did in something like Big Time Adolescence, and he really delivers.
The humor in the film is also rings with a more bitter and melancholic touch than in previous Apatow films. Much of the film’s funniest moments are often bits of conversation, throwaway lines, and it lacks the feeling of unrestrained improvisation that some of Apatow’s previous films featured. And it’s not like Davidson, or even Burr, bogart the best lines, as practically everyone in the cast gets a moment to shine here, especially some of the smaller, supporting players like Maude Apatow, Bel Powley, Steve Buscemi, Pamela Adlon, Moisés Arias, Ricky Velez, and Lou Wilson.
But what makes the film resonate isn’t so much the humor, it’s the emotional journey that has stayed with me long after seeing it. The way it explores grief, and the struggle of finding your place in the world really works here. Take the humor away, and there’s a fairly bleak portrait of Scott’s life in Staten Island, but the filmmakers use the humor and arguably familiar character trajectory bring a hopeful note to the proceedings while not necessarily tying everything up in a nice bow at the end. It acknowledges the messiness of growing up, and that is reflected in the filmmaking.
While The King Of Staten Island can be considered too long like many of Judd Apatow’s films, clocking it at two hours and sixteen minutes, it is time that is spent hanging out with characters that are very well and authentically realized. The meandering nature of it actually helps in creating this warm and welcoming atmosphere where we follow Scott’s journey to better himself, and allow himself to move on from his father’s death. The film’s naturalistic sensibilities, combined with the work put in by the cast, especially Pete Davidson, might not necessarily make for the funniest film I’ve seen this year, but certainly one of them, along with being one of the more moving character studies I’ve had the pleasure of watching. If anything, it absolutely cements Davidson as a star.