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

5. The Frequently Hilarious Dialogue

While few are likely to deem this the funniest movie of Apatow's career, it does absolutely provide some much-needed gut laughs in a year that's been understandably bereft of quality mainstream comedies.

Quite appropriately, much of the humour comes from dark places, centered in particular around mortality, with a brutal honesty that's occasionally as shocking as it is amusing.

But The King of Staten Island has far more to offer than mere edgy laughs in the comedy department: there are some killer, classic Apatow-style one-liners in this movie, from witty retorts about the toxicity of nepotism to an indignant rant about bedbugs that's hysterical precisely because it's true.

If you've been craving a new comedy to rouse some big laughs, Apatow's latest does just enough to deliver them, even if it's not always on the laugh-a-minute level of his broader work in the genre, as was seemingly intentional in this instance.