The King of Staten Island was just released onto the HBO Max streaming platform this week. It was one of the first movies released straight to Video on Demand since the virus started. I did not pay the $20 at the time to watch it because that was the price of what it cost to see unlimited movies in the theaters prepandemic, and I had decided to leave my job, and I did not want to waste the extra money on a movie, but as it turns out, it would have been worth the money. It was a great blend between comedy and tragedy. Pete Davidson really starred in telling a form of his life story. I listened to the podcasts about it when it came out, and they talked relatively highly of the film, but I was still questioning it some, but the story was very compelling.
This film delves into a story of Pete Davidson’s young adult life, it was not exactly true to his life, but it follows along relatively closely. It was about a twenty something year-old, Scott, who still lives at home with his Mom, and he is dealing with serious depression and ADD. The depression was largely in part due to the death of his father, who was a fire fighter. In real life Davidson’s father died in 9/11 as a firefighter, but in the movie, he died from a serious fire trying to save some people. When Scott’s mom falls in love with a man, whose nine-year-old son Scott tried to give a tattoo, it ends up with Scott getting kicked out and feeling scorned. He has a hard time finding a purpose in his life and any real motivation. Then Scott finds a way to get his Mom to break up with Ray, the Mom’s boyfriend, and Scott thought it would help him feel better, but it ends up in Scott becoming even more lost. Eventually he crawls back to this man he so hated, Ray, and Ray helps him find a purpose in the firehouse.
Throughout the story it seems like the biggest battle Scott was fighting against was him losing his father in a fire when he was seven. Although he was 24, he was still facing heavy consequences of his father’s death. It seemed like his heavy dependency on weed was due to the loss of his father and him trying to cope with that loss. Also he was placed on anti-depressant due to this same reason. This completely threw his life into a tailspin, that he has an incredibly hard time to recover from and become a more normal member of society. From personal experience, I know that it is incredibly hard to lose a parent, especially at a young age. I lost my mother ten years ago when I was 13, and it really depends on that person, and the level in which it will affect them and the duration of the effect. During the holiday season, it still gets hard for me around Thanksgiving and Christmas, because that was the period when my mother was the sickest, so I feel like I have a strong connection with Scott’s character, or any character that lost a parent at a young age. It is one of the worst clubs to be a member, but as a member I do feel like overcoming this obstacle has made me feel more able to get past other hardships as well.
As someone who was going through so much pain emotionally, it seemed like his outlet for this emotion was to become a heavy drug user. Everyone has their own way of getting out their negative emotions or trying to get over some event that seriously affected their life, some of those expressions are healthier than others. It does not seem like anti-depressants and weed were the best source of recovery for Scott in this situation, but what he really needed was a group of supportive people that gave him a purpose, and he found this in the firehouse once he joined Ray. I have felt a similar way about basketball, running, and spending time with my Dad through my life so far. I used these hobbies and the strong relationship with my Dad to make it through the struggles I have faced, because I know that no matter how hard life gets that I can help get through them in these ways. Running has helped me mentally in more ways than I could have ever imagined. It helps me burn the endorphins of frustration and stress, and it gives me time to contemplate all sorts of situations I have gone through in my life, and the relationship with my Dad has given me a great stability and feeling of safety that is impossible to find anywhere else. He has given me someone to look up to and ask for guidance when needed. He has been more helpful to me than he will ever know, whereas it seems that Scott did not have the same sort of support system through his mom even though it did seem like she was trying.
The genre of dark comedy has seen to become more prominent in recent years. It blends events that are not generally considered funny and adds in elements that give levity to a serious situation, but I do think it does a good job of giving a higher accuracy to these high stakes situations because very rarely are events in life straight up one feeling. There can be a large amount of pain in losing someone in your life, but all that comes with it there are going to be moments of levity in them as well. It may be harder to recognize them when going through them, but once the journey has been completed when looking back a person can have more of a comprehensive view of everything that has happened.
In one area that Pete Davidson has shown the best ability to recover, and that is resiliency. Resiliency is the ability to recover from hard situations. Davidson may have suffered severely growing up, but he was able to overcome these problems. He was still able to become a key cast member on Saturday Night Live and make movies like this one. It still seems like he does struggle with his mental health from stories that have come out in recent years, but he has managed to be successful through the pain. Resiliency is a difficult trait to garner because it means a person must go through extreme struggles to find their way out of said troubles. There are varying degrees of resilience it could be anything from coming back from an injury to going through hardships in life like losing someone or losing a job, but him being able to bounce back from any of these depending on your feelings for them can be incredibly hard to do.
One other aspect of the movie that I found to be very appropriate was the use of Kid Cudi in the movie for music at multiple points. This was appropriate because like Pete Davidson, Kid Cudi is someone who has seriously struggled with his mental health. It is very prevalent in his music when the lyrics are viewed. It has also been in the news that he has had struggles. So it seems like the two of them are kindred spirits and have similar struggles that they go through.
When it comes to 2020 movies, this one was close to the top of my list, I ranked it second, only behind The Trial of the Chicago 7. The biggest problem with this movie was that it was a little long. It was not fully a comedy, but a typical comedy is executed between ninety and one-hundred minutes, this movie was over two hours. I am not sure which part exactly could be taken out, but there were moments that were unnecessary. I would still highly recommend watching it, it gives plenty of good laughs, and it gives plenty of emotional tugs as well. I gave it a ranking of 90. I also watched The Big Lebowski for the first time, and it is a highly renown comedy. I found it to be good, but it tapered off at the end, so I did not find it quite as worthy of the praise that it received, but still decent.
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