The King Of Staten Island

Being without the cinema has been difficult for The Brighton Film Club. The buzz of seeing a new film amongst fellow fans is a feeling that we can’t wait to have back in a few weeks’ time as those theatre doors swing open again.

In the meantime, it’s been fun to post the 'Isolation Inspiration' recommendations on Instagram and we’ve also been diving into some ‘best movies ever’ lists to try and broaden our own watched lists ever further.

The announcement that the cinemas are reopening, and confirmation of the rescheduled release dates of Tenet, Mulan, No Time To Die et al. has also seen a number of new films that, for a number of reasons, have been pushed to streaming releases rather than theatrical ones.

Which segues us nicely into our first review since the lockdown came into effect after a Saturday night rental of the latest from the Judd Apatow canon: The King Of Staten Island.

First up, it’s a crying shame that this film has been caught up in the complications and won’t get a wider release it richly deserves. It seems destined to sit alongside some lesser-seen and vastly underrated films in the Apatow stable like Funny People, Begin Again and The Big Sick.

It shares a fair number of similarities with the latter. That film was penned by its star: Kumail Najiani and was based on his own life, …Staten Island follows the same theme with Pete Davidson in the acting and writing chair.

Davidson excels in his first leading role. He has to imbue Scott, the fictionalised version of himself, with enough charisma to keep us on his journey and, obviously knowing the character as he does and chiming with his off-screen personality, he’s absolutely winning.

Ostensibly, we’re in the traditional Apatow wheelhouse: a fairly lengthy slice of comedy-drama which tows that line just so, equally capably of inducing tears from laughs or cries. There’s a humorous squad of stoner friends and we’re propelled with zippy banter between seemingly innocuous scenes before we’re fully immersed hook, line and sinker into these characters and story.

The difference comes with the general maturation of Apatow’s work. There’s always been deeper meaning to the comedy but there seems to be a recent move to delve a little more into some of the psychological aspects to the stories. Here, Scott is lost: out of work and dropped out of education, still living at home after losing his firefighter father as a child. The film explores his grief and depression in detail and adds layers to the surface comedy. Like The Big Sick, it’s a film you thoroughly buy into.

It’s only let down by its rather abrupt ending. Despite being over two hours the time breezes by and things feel like they’re resolving to a satisfying conclusion before Apatow pulls the curtain down. Perhaps that’s the point, the audience is left to decide whether Scott is really going to move forward or not but it does leave you wanting more. I guess that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Another absolute gem to add to Apatow’s astounding collection and a path to big things for Davidson, who speaks a little more about his father in his Netflix stand up special: Alive From New York should you be interested to find out more after the credits have rolled.

Apatow is simply one of the best and most important figures in 21st century film, everything he touches is essential viewing.

4 stars ****