If you’ve found Pete Davidson irritating on Saturday Night Live, you’re in for a surprise with his autobiographically tinged comedy feature The King of Staten Island: In the movie he’s irritating in a completely different way.
Childish and manic on SNL, Davidson plays a sullen depressive in the film, which repeatedly seeks to find comic mileage in scenes built around other characters trying to be nice as he responds with uncalled-for nastiness. He’s meant to be anarchically funny, but instead he’s a typical narcissistic adolescent bore. The King of Staten Island, which is being released via video on demand in lieu of a theatrical rollout, is the worst of the six films directed by Judd Apatow (who, along with Davidson, is one of the three writers of the script). Apatow’s instinct to dig into people’s life stories looking for material is a good one, but this movie is merely the dung in the bildungsroman.
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