Film Reviews

The Wackness

• Rating:
• Director: Jonathan Levine
• Starring: Ben Kingsley
• Details: US / 99mins

"You got a shitty way of looking at things, Shapiro. I look at the dopeness, you look at the wackness." It's 1994 and lonely, hip hop-loving loving New York teenager Luke Shapiro (Peck) has just graduated from high school and plans to spend his summer selling weed to fund college. Down on life and all it has to offer, Luke visits his shrink Dr. Squires (Kingsley) to unload his woes - and a few grams of green at the same time. The kooky, bong-smoking Squires has his own problems: he's in a loveless marriage (with Janssen) and doesn't see eye-to-eye with stepdaughter Stephanie (Thirlby), whom Luke has got the hots for. Luke and Squires get close over the summer and teach each other a few things about life, love and drugs. Writer-director Levine (All The Boys Love Mandy Lane) got more things right than wrong in The Wackness, but what he did nail was casting: Kingsley is perfect and enjoys his funniest, most energetic role in years; Peck (coming a long way from Nickelodeon's Drake And Josh) is not far behind him as the perpetually half-stoned Luke, a boy caught somewhere between innocence, existentialism and A Tribe Called Quest. The two cook up a storm together and their scenes sparkle so much, when they're apart The Wackness goes a little off the boil. Levine can sometimes veer from gritty reality, where his movie is at its strongest, to flights of fancy, and although those little escapades are fun, they don't belong in this film. Method Man and Mary-Kate Olsen co-star.

Review by Gavin Burke