One star. Rated R, for drug use, sexual candor, brief violence and gore, and relentless profanity and vulgarity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 6.12.20
I cannot imagine this film’s target audience.
For starters, calling it a comedy is false advertising; nothing is funny here. Not even remotely amusing.
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| Scott (Pete Davidson) sees nothing wrong with staying home with his mother (Marisa Tomei) most nights, and watching mindless television. Alas, when this cozy dynamic is threatened by a newcomer, Scott becomes even meaner than usual. |
If writer/director Judd Apatow has made this for millennials, it’s a savagely damning portrait. Are we seriously to believe that anything about this misbegotten drama’s protagonist is endearing?
Even given Apatow’s decency-shredding tendencies, and fondness for vulgarity, The King of Staten Island is way, way beyond tolerable.
It’s available as an on-demand streaming rental, at a premium price.
At its core, the script — by Apatow, Dave Sirus and star Pete Davidson — is a redemption saga. Meaning, we spend the first two acts watching ruthlessly selfish, 24-year-old, weed-smoking degenerate Scott Carlin (Davidson) abuse everybody in his orbit … after which we’re supposed to cheer him on during the third act, when he starts getting his act together.
Sorry, but no; this formula works only if the character in question deserves redemption. Which Scott most certainly does not.
On top of which, the character dynamics here don’t exist in anything remotely approaching reality. While higher than a kite, and egged on by his “friends,” Scott starts to tattoo a 9-year-old boy … and he doesn’t get locked up for child abuse? Worse still, the boy’s father — following an initial furious tirade — quickly turns forgiving, because he wants to start dating Scott’s mother?!?
This is supposed to seem reasonable?
Not in this universe. This script — and premise — are forced contrivances stretched far beyond the snapping point.
Scott, a foul-mouthed Failure To Launch, still lives with his mother, Margie (Marisa Tomei, who does her best to bring some class and charm to these dire proceedings). Their lives have remained on hold ever since her husband, Scott’s father, died in action as a Staten Island fireman. Margie maintains a living room shrine to her late husband; Scott has weaponized his grief as an excuse to be nasty to everybody.
He’s a would-be tattoo “artist” who isn’t very good, despite having inked up loser buddies Oscar (Ricky Velez), Richie (Lou Wilson) and Igor (Moises Arias). Their notion of fun is getting stoned while playing video games, and being vulgar with a gaggle of similarly vacuous female friends.
Remove the profanity from their “conversations,” and they’d be forced to stare silently at each other. (This is scripting? I think not.)
The one exception is Kelsey (Bel Powley), Scott’s sorta-kinda girlfriend — he eschews the label — who genuinely wants to better herself. Points to her, and to Powley, who delivers one of the film’s few authentic-human-being performances. Which means, of course, that Scott treats Kelsey like dirt.
Following the ill-advised tattooed-child incident, the father in question — Bill Burr, as Ray — begins the aforementioned relationship with Margie, much to Scott’s disgust and horror. The latter emotion erupts because Ray’s also a Staten Island fireman, so how (Scott wonders) could his mother risk such heartache a second time?
This seems a reasonable reaction, were this a reasonable scenario. But it isn’t; Davidson is much too successful at making Scott a deplorable jerk.
Numbnuts sidebars wander in, as if from outer space. Ray and his ex-wife think nothing of assigning Scott — who’s blindingly obvious bad news — to walk their two young children to school each morning. (Seriously?) Oscar, Richie and Igor decide to break into a pharmacy late one night, to “make their fortune” by stealing and re-selling all manner of drugs.
Scott repeatedly lives down to — and beneath — everybody’s lowest expectations. That includes college-bound younger sister Claire (Maude Apatow, sadly wasted in a role that feels like a pointless afterthought).
And then, whoosh, the third act suddenly hijacks us into an entirely different (and vastly superior) movie. Scott becomes something of a mascot to the crew at Ray’s fire station: a thoroughly engaging gang supervised by a veteran dubbed “Papa” (Steve Buscemi, a welcome presence).
But even Buscemi, good as he is, can’t sell the film’s most ludicrous line. Noting Ray’s ongoing disapproval of Scott — the two have maintained a tempestuous relationship — Papa looks sagely at his colleague and asks, “You ever gonna give this kid a break, or what?”
Cue the roll of eyes, and a mental scream: “Or what! Or what! He doesn’t deserve a break!”
It seems obvious that this portion of the film comes from Davidson, a regular on Saturday Night Live since 2014; his father was a firefighter and first-responder who died when the Marriott World Trade Center collapsed on 9/11. We’ll never know if Davidson, on his own, might have written a better script; what’s obvious is that, by the time Apatow and Sirus got done, the result was vulgar, tasteless rubbish.
We’re also long past due for a new Hollywood rule: Self-indulgent films of this nature shouldn’t be allowed to exceed 95 minutes. This appalling junk runs an interminable 136 minutes, the first two-thirds of which are akin to root-canal surgery. Without anesthesia.
You’ve been warned.
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