The King Of Staten Island

How to pull the punch line even when the joke didn’t reach that stage, in The King Of Staten Island.

So I found an uncanny resemblance in the co-writer and director, Judd Apatow’s The King Of Staten Island with the director John Wells’s Burnt. In the sense that both of these films pushes its character and extrapolates an oddly incongruent scene that asks for a leap of faith from its audience, something that you just won’t ever be able to give. The film has a very pronounced three act structure with loud seven pillar beats that can be spotted from far away. But what’s fascinating is the way they reach from one beat to another. There is a wide gap in between those emotional beats and it looked like it did so for it felt necessary to drum it, rather than organically let the story create one. The only thing I was surprised and delighted to see was Bill Burr’s presence on screen and in this world and how oddly natural it felt.