The King of Staten Island (2020)

The King of Staten Island arrives as a shaggy, overlong, genuinely affecting piece of self-mythology from Judd Apatow and Pete Davidson. Davidson's Scott is a case study in inertia, grief, and the low-grade chaos of a man who has turned his father's death into a permanent address. The film follows him through weed, tattoos, a mother's new romance, and the slow humiliation of needing to become an adult. It is semi-autobiographical, and that shows in the best and worst ways: the details feel lived in, while the running time feels negotiated by committee.

The film's cultural awareness is mostly incidental. Its ensemble is casually multiethnic, and the women around Scott get small flares of agency: Margie re-enters the dating pool, Kelsey studies for a civil service exam. None of this amounts to a thesis. Race is not a subject. No LGBTQ characters appear. The environment does not enter the frame. The pharmacy robbery is a plot complication, not an indictment of late capitalism. Body positivity is absent. The movie is not trying to educate its audience, and it has no interest in rewriting history. It simply wants to watch Scott shuffle around Staten Island.

Where the film does commit is to Scott's interior weather. His ADD, Crohn's disease, and mental-health struggles are not decorative; they shape his days, his avoidance, his self-medication. The movie treats his neuroses with sympathy and comic patience. Apatow observes and jokes; he does not sermonize. The result is a coming-of-age story that earns its tenderness without demanding agreement. It is also indulgent, shapeless, and too pleased with its own slackness. Still, Davidson's performance holds the center. The film is a portrait of a man learning to leave the house, and it respects the difficulty of that small, enormous task.