The King of Staten Island

Judd Apatow has already boosted the big-screen profiles of Seth Rogen and Amy Schumer. The King of Staten Island provides evidence that Pete Davidson could be next in line.

The comedian adeptly mixes his edgy “Saturday Night Live” persona with a contemplative and heartfelt tenderness in this semiautobiographical saga of arrested development, parental role models, and personal redemption.

Meanwhile, Apatow (Trainwreck) modulates the inherent comedy and drama into an amusing and empathetic package, again probing contemporary relationship dynamics with a bittersweet sense of mischievous provocation.

Davidson plays Scott, a twentysomething slacker and aspiring tattoo artist whose mother (Marisa Tomei) — the widow of a fallen firefighter — both condemns and enables his lack of ambition.

The more he watches everyone around him succeed, Scott turns rebellious and condescending — a budding misanthrope determined to drag down everybody around him. “There’s something wrong with me. I’m not OK up there,” he muses in a rare moment of serious introspection.

After his younger sister (Maude Apatow) leaves for college and his girlfriend (Bel Powley) loses patience with his dysfunction, Scott finds incentive for becoming more responsible. Yet when his mother starts dating another firefighter (Bill Burr), he must confront his simmering hostility and unresolved grief.

Since he’s in almost every frame, the film’s success hinges on Davidson’s performance. Fortunately, he conveys a natural screen presence that captures Scott’s awkwardness and offbeat charm.

His slacker friends establish a fun rapport, and Tomei balances strength and vulnerability as the emotional anchor and the primary voice of reason.

Beneath the film’s caustic one-liners and raunchy stoner gags is an examination of emotional fragility through a protagonist navigating the weight of expectations while still processing his grief and facing uncertainty about his future.

This is hardly new territory, of course, and the dialogue-heavy screenplay meanders through an uneven middle section that endures some contrivances along the road to catharsis. The cloudy motives for some of the sophomoric misdeeds seem arbitrary.

Yet the film’s self-deprecating affection for its working-class setting provides a few inspired zingers: “We’re the only place New Jersey looks down on,” Scott declares.

Apatow’s first narrative feature in six years musters a hard-earned sympathy. Like its star, The King of Staten Island might feel obnoxious if it wasn’t so consistently funny.

Rated R, 137 minutes.