Pete Davidson channels Pete Davidson in ‘Big Time Adolescence’

I’m a little worried about Pete Davidson.

Then yet again, that’s the enduring brand of Davidson, the proudly unstable “Saturday Evening Live” comic who’s having a second with a Netflix particular, an impending semi-autobiographical Judd Apatow film and this dramedy. In “Big Time Adolescence,” he’s playing, not in opposition to form, a witty, underachieving slacker with a predilection for weed. His character, Zeke, is the short-lived higher faculty boyfriend of Kate (Emily Arlook), whose little brother Mo (Griffin Gluck) will get so connected to him that the boys keep friends extensive after the few breaks up. But Zeke also stays, resolutely, a boy, as he ages into his 20s — and he also, frustratingly for Mo’s mom and dad (Jon Cryer and Julia Murney), stays Mo’s finest close friend.

Director/writer Jason Orley (whose debut was the Davidson particular “Alive From New York”) deploys a gradual change in tone, as Zeke’s disdain for anything at all resembling adult lifestyle goes from amusing to worrisome to just simple sad. What begins as a comedy, with Zeke the form of zany, inappropriate older-brother figure every socially uncomfortable child could possibly aspiration of, drifts into darker territory. (I consider your age will be inversely proportionate to how rapidly you begin to come across all of this upsetting.) When Zeke comes up with the brilliant notion of having Mo market pot at higher faculty functions, you know items are headed south.

Gluck (“Locke & Key”) is sensible and precocious and a little sq., reduce from the Joseph Gordon-Levitt mildew. Mo’s insecurities make him the perfect follower of Zeke, who may possibly absence for a decent work or the capacity to continue being devoted to a girlfriend, but in no way for self esteem. The musician Equipment Gun Kelly reveals up as a person of Zeke’s lowlife friends, who look to be endlessly feeding on greasy takeout, consuming crappy beer and playing video clip game titles. What’s for a teen boy not to aspire to?

Davidson expertly performs the function like he’s playing . . . effectively, Pete Davidson, which is how I consider his job will go. (It’s certainly worked for other comics. Has Kevin Hart ever played anything at all else?) Possessing gone community with psychological health issues and addiction struggles, he brings a believable take note of pathos to Zeke, whose reaction to a modernist portray hints at some innovative darkness: Daily life is “just a bunch of scribbles and d - - ks and violence, all in a void,” he suggests. In the long run, nevertheless, he just can’t escape his have juvenile impulses — as a result the title, maybe. In any circumstance, I’m even now likely to stress about Davidson.