The King of Staten Island
Rating
B- (80/100)
Three words
Slow, Normal, Unfocused
Brief Review
The King of Staten Island is a semi-autobiographical movie based on Pete Davidson’s life as an unmotivated young adult who is seemingly content with living at his mom’s house. First off, if you’re unfamiliar with Pete Davidson, he is on SNL and has a semi-dark sense of humor. The movie entirely relies on him, so if you aren’t a fan of his style, you won’t like this. The King of Staten Island is a little tough for me to review because it was both enjoyable but at the same time not. It was definitely too long and too slow for the length though. At times it can really drag. However, every time I thought “how much longer?”, almost self-aware, the movie perks up and is either funny or touching. So it just keeps hanging on by a thread and saving itself. That said, this is definitely not funny enough to be a true comedy. Nor is it emotional enough to be a drama either. So like many movies, The King of Staten Island gets lost in the middle. The biggest issue is that the movie just seems so ordinary, like you’re watching a person’s real life. Unfortunately in this movie that person is a chronic underachiever who doesn’t do much. Now that paints a harsher picture than I mean to because there are truly some really funny scenes, but those are too few and far between. Overall this isn’t something that I would watch again, but it isn’t terrible either. It really could have been pretty good had they cut some time off of it.
