The King of Stat­en Island

When Pete David­son joined Sat­ur­day Night Live in 2014, he became one of the show’s youngest ever cast mem­bers. Giv­en that the icon­ic Amer­i­can sketch show launched the careers of Eddie Mur­phy, Adam San­dler and Will Fer­rell (and many more besides) many were quick to her­ald the then-20-year-old David­son as a star-in-the-making.

In recent years he’s made more head­lines for his off-screen romances than for his comedic and act­ing prowess. But Judd Apa­tow saw enough poten­tial in David­son to make him both the sub­ject and star of his lat­est project, tak­ing inspi­ra­tion from his own expe­ri­ences grow­ing up in Stat­en Island, New York.

That prospect – a ​‘biopic’ about a twen­tysome­thing ston­er bum­ming around the neigh­bour­hood in a state of arrest­ed devel­op­ment – might not sound par­tic­u­lar­ly appeal­ing giv­en Davidson’s some­what divi­sive style of com­e­dy, which errs toward sex and pot jokes. But Apa­tow is a pro at har­ness­ing star pow­er into accom­plished per­for­mances; he did so with Adam San­dler in 2009’s Fun­ny Peo­ple, and again in 2015 with Train­wreck, which, despite being a fair­ly con­ven­tion­al roman­tic com­e­dy, saw Amy Schumer gar­ner praise in the lead role.

While not quite as ambi­tious as Fun­ny Peo­ple (who else had the nerve to make a three-hour San­dler vehi­cle back in 2009), The King of Stat­en Island is a refresh­ing take on the ​‘bro com­e­dy’ genre that Apa­tow him­self helped to ush­er in. While it does cen­tre the per­spec­tive of a seem­ing­ly feck­less scamp in much the same way as Knocked Up, Super­bad and For­get­ting Sarah Mar­shall, The King of Stat­en Island offers far more of an inter­ro­ga­tion of its cen­tral char­ac­ter while still retain­ing a cer­tain charm and wit.

David­son was sev­en when his fire­fight­er father died in the ⁹⁄₁₁ ter­ror attacks, a fact he has spo­ken can­did­ly about and fre­quent­ly incor­po­rat­ed into his stand-up rou­tines. His char­ac­ter here, Scott, has evi­dent­ly not recov­ered from the death of his father in a hotel fire some years before. When his moth­er Margie (Marisa Tomei) begins dat­ing anoth­er fire­fight­er (Bill Burr) Scott is outraged.

This forces him to con­front his feel­ings not only about his father’s death but also his state of per­pet­u­al ado­les­cence; he spends all his time get­ting high with his friends, doo­dling crude tat­toos on them in a dank base­ment, and refus­ing to com­mit to his sup­port­ive but frus­trat­ed lady friend Kelsey (Bel Powley).

Ele­ments of the film are undoubt­ed­ly famil­iar, but there’s a sense of com­fort in the for­mu­la – this isn’t an attempt to rein­vent the wheel, more to cor­rect its course. While Scott is sym­pa­thet­ic, he’s also infi­nite­ly frus­trat­ing: child­ish, irre­spon­si­ble and crude, although ulti­mate­ly not a bad person.

Cru­cial­ly, the film under­stands that it’s up to him to change his own behav­iour; there is no Man­ic Pix­ie Dream Girl or oth­er out­side force to con­vince Scott to be a bet­ter per­son. That’s some­thing he has to decide for him­self. And it is a choice to own your per­son­al demons and to live along­side them, instead of sim­ply lan­guish­ing in self-pity.

Although this is Davidson’s film, Apa­tow doesn’t waste the strong sup­port­ing cast. Pow­ley is on top form as the would-be girl­friend with her own set of ambi­tions, while Burr is a per­fect foil to Scott as the hot-head­ed Ray (who has some grow­ing up to do of his own). There’s a frank­ness to the way male rela­tion­ships are por­trayed here, from Scott’s base­ment bud­dies to the cama­raderie of the fire­house. While tra­di­tion­al­ly men have been dis­suad­ed from talk­ing about their feel­ings and men­tal health, The King of Stat­en Island encour­ages open­ness as a step toward recovery.

Per­haps the most sur­pris­ing aspect of the film is how it looks. Shot on 35mm film by Paul Thomas Anderson’s reg­u­lar DoP Robert Elswit, it is unde­ni­ably gor­geous, even watched at home on a tiny lap­top screen. It has the cosi­ness of a home video – although this is a stu­dio com­e­dy, Apa­tow is clear­ly striv­ing for a more indie aes­thet­ic, and as such the film has more in com­mon with Freaks and Geeks than The 40-Year-Old Virgin.

The com­bi­na­tion of per­son­al his­to­ry and great com­e­dy writ­ing works excep­tion­al­ly well, and there’s a sin­cer­i­ty to The King of Stat­en Island that ele­vates it from tox­ic mas­culin­i­ty mis­sive to wry explo­ration of trau­ma-based inertia.