‘Wackness’ is Lost in 1994 and in 2008
By Daniel Neman, Richmond Times-Dispatch, Va.
Aug. 1–Perhaps you are wondering how “The Wackness” happens to have acquired that title.
It comes from a line of dialogue that says everything you need to know about the film. It is 1994, and a young man and a young woman are falling in love on the beach. The attractive woman turns to the attractive man and says:
“You have a really [unpleasant] way of looking at things. I don’t have that problem. I just look at the dopeness. But you, you just look at the wackness. You know?”
“The Wackness” (an equally bad title would be “The Dopeness”) is a coming-of-age story about an unaccountably friendless newly minted high school graduate-drug dealer on the tony Upper East Side of Manhattan who has a crush on the stepdaughter of his psychiatrist, the worst psychiatrist in the world.
The shrink smokes dope with his patients — our dealer hero pays him in pot — he tells his family about his patients’ problems, he offers to procure a prostitute for one patient and he tells his patients that he hates his wife.
And then, for several scenes that arise out of nowhere and are never adequately explained, the psychiatrist suddenly turns into Anne Bancroft as Mrs. Robinson in “The Graduate.”
Hangdog-cute Josh Peck stars as Luke, the sort of kid who is called to sell drugs to a high school graduation party to which he was not invited. But the girl of his dreams is there, Stephanie, played by Olivia Thrilby. Stephanie is also the stepdaughter of Luke’s shrink, played by Ben Kingsley, who appears to be channeling Harvey Keitel.
As the 18-year-old drug dealer and the 65-or-so psychiatrist become unlikely friends, the doctor becomes weirdly jealous of Luke’s increasing interest in his stepdaughter. But then the script suddenly drops that entire part of the relationship as if it never existed.
Written and directed by Jonathan Levine, the film moves along in fits and starts, with far more fits than starts. The man has a tin ear when it comes to dialogue and character motivation, and he almost bursts a blood vessel straining to place the film in 1994 (references abound to “Beverly Hills, 90210,”"Forrest Gump,” Zima and Rudy Giuliani).
At his best, Levine has a lovely scene just after Luke kisses Stephanie for the first time; Luke dances down the sidewalk, which lights under his feet like a dance floor. And Levine demonstrates an effective touch in several romantic scenes. But then he blows them with such atrocious 1994-specific dialogue as “I got mad love for you, Shorty. That’s on the real. I want to listen to Boyz II Men when I’m with you.”
Kind of drains the romance right out, doesn’t it?
The film is made up of equal parts pretension and ideas appropriated from any number of other films, which is why it feels so familiar. Kingsley overacts, as he sometimes does, but Peck and usually Thrilby are worth watching. By the end, we even realize that maybe the movie is supposed to be a comedy, sort of, but that seems to be a decision Levine made late in the writing process.
It’s wack, but it isn’t dope. “The Wackness” won the audience favorite award at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.
That’s really all you need to know.
Contact Daniel Neman at (804) 649-6408 or DNeman@timesdispatch.com.
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