The King Of Staten Island Review: 6 Ups & 3 Downs

Downs...

3. The Ridiculously Padded Runtime

Surely the most common complaint about Apatow as a filmmaker is that the guy really hates making movies under two hours long, which given the decidedly shorter length of your average studio comedy is a bit of a problem.

Of Apatow's six features to date, only The 40-Year-Old Virgin has clocked in at less than two hours - and with an 116 minute runtime, only barely - while The King of Staten Island is a stonking 136 minutes long, and yet somehow still 10 minutes shorter than his longest film, Funny People.

Despite Apatow having a team of three editors working under him, the end result of his new project is still wildly self-indulgent and at least 20 minutes longer than it needs to be - if not more.

Though Apatow clearly loves letting scenes breathe and go on for as long as they have to, there are so many small subplots and relatively inconsequential scenes which surely should've been cut out of this, or at least saved for a Director's Cut in the future.

While hardly a slog, it's hard not to feel like Apatow could've made the exact same point in well under two hours. Instead, the film's many successes are pitted against a runtime that ultimately proves quite exhausting.