Better late than never: HE conveys a hearty high-five to Deadline‘s Todd McCarthy‘s for his decision to include Judd Apatow‘s King of Staten Island in his recent “Top Ten Films of 2020” piece (12.31.20).
Myself, McCarthy, Chris Willman, a few others…obviously a small fraternity. But my opinion isn’t an “opinion” — I knew right away during my initial viewing seven months ago that Apatow’s film was a few cuts above the norm. I’m not saying “this is what I think” — I’m saying “you may or may not not have embraced or bonded with this film, but it’s quite excellent either way, and I know this with absolute certainty…a sagely written and performed portrait of a somewhat coarse underclass culture…a funny but serious film that in some ways reminded me of those early ’60s British kitchen sink dramas.”
Excerpt from McCarthy’s 6.12.20 review: “Written by Apatow along with Pete Davidson and Dave Sirus, KOSI has the solid lived-in feel of a working class community…they’re rude, they’re slobs, they’re layabouts, they’re no-accounts and they all speak in clichés as if they’ve learned their entire vocabularies from watching TV. It’s a film full of characters who have to say ‘I’m sorry’ a lot. Bottom line, though — they’re all quite recognizably and vibrantly human.”
An excerpt from my 6.8.20 review, “The Staten Island Funnies“:
