Presumably a fair-sized percentage of the HE community saw Judd Apatow and Pete Davidson‘s King of Staten Island over the weekend. So what’s the verdict? I wasn’t sure during the first 45 or so, but then I realized it was dealing honest cards and became a staunch fan, especially after catching it a second time.

There’s almost a 20 point disparity between between critics and Joe Popcorn on Rotten Tomatoes (71% critics, 90% ticket buyers). What are critics missing that ticket buyers aren’t? Say what you want, but I believed every word of it…every line, emotion, situation, character.

HE reaction, posted on 6.8.20: “You can give the side-eye to The King of Staten Island all you want. You can say it’s too oddball fringe-y, too lower-depths, too submerged on its own weed planet and too caught up in nihilism and arrested development to connect with Joe and Jane Popcorn. But because it’s funny and plain-spoken and doesn’t back off from an unusual milieu and mentality, and certainly from Pete Davidson‘s ‘Scott’, a layabout for the ages, I strongly disagree.

“KOSI made me smile and guffaw and even laugh out loud several times (highly unusual for an LQTM-er). It’s peddling sardonic humor that doesn’t feel schticky, although I guess it is. The tone is low-key raw, kinda nervy, certainly unpretentious and almost entirely bullshit-free.”