Occupant Films, LLC, Shapiro Levine ProductionsReview in a Hurry: This hazy coming-of-age film about a teenaged NYC dope dealer (Josh Peck) is often a little dazed but never confused, even when (Sir!) Ben Kingsley is dropping mad rhymes.
The Bigger Picture: You'd have to be pretty high to find anything unfamiliar in the story of The Wackness—for all its little touches, it's just a story about growing up. But when you're covering familiar ground, it's the execution that matters. Good thing writer-director Jonathan Levine is clearly working from the heart in his tale of Luke (Peck), an angst-filled city kid who barters weed for therapy from his damaged-goods shrink Dr. Squires (Kingsley).
Squires has his own problems—he's frozen in perpetual midlife crisis, blithely ignoring his own advice and self-medicating to the point he's sleepwalking through what's left of his life. When Luke gets involved with Squires' stepdaughter (Olivia Thirlby), a strange sort of triangle develops, and everyone wakes up—for better or worse.
The Wackness is set in 1994—adamantly set then, in fact. Make no mistake, this is every bit as much a period piece as an adaptation of Jane Eyre—mixtapes are state-of-the-art and Giuliani is still regarded as a jerk.
It's in loving adherence to the conventions of the time that Levine builds a bridge between the particular and the universal. These touchstones compensate for shortcomings both structural (we've seen this movie before) and visual (last time we saw it, the depth-of-field wasn't so narrow as to make us squint). It's an acquired taste, more bitter than sweet, but it lingers—a lot like smoke.
The 180—a Second Opinion: You'll either love or hate Kingsley's frequently goofy performance. If you hate it, the 91 minutes of The Wackness will seem a whole lot longer.