Movie Review: The Wackness

One of the Ten Commandments of screenwriting is to write what you know and Jonathan Levine clearly took that lesson to heart while penning his hilarious sophomore feature, The Wackness.

The writer/director drew on his own experiences as a mid-’90s Manhattan teenager to craft the seriocomic tale of Luke (Josh Peck), a recent high-school grad who cruises around NYC during the summer of ‘94 toting a walkman filled with hip-hop mixtapes and an ice cart packed with dime bags of mary jane.

Despite his access to great marijuana, courtesy of Caribbean connection Percy (Method Man), Luke went through school as an outsider, never invited to join the popular kids or even his fellow stoners. In fact, the only person he can really call a friend is one of his clients, Dr. Squires (Sir Ben Kingsley…yes, you read that right), a middle-aged shrink going through a wicked mid-life crisis. Tired of his job and stale marriage to a much younger woman (Famke Janssen), Squires devotes his energy to improving Luke’s life, primarily by encouraging the frustrated virgin to just get laid already. Of course, the doc reverses that prescription when Luke falls for his stepdaughter Stephanie (Juno’s Olivia Thirlby), a temptress who has a bad habit of breaking guys’ hearts.

Throughout the film, Levine strives to connect Luke’s coming-of-age story to the growing pains New York experienced in 1994, when Giuliani came into power and changed the face of the city. But let’s be real for a sec: the ‘94 setting is mainly a gimmick to distract the audience from the film’s overly familiar narrative. Fortunately, this gimmick pays off like gangbusters. Packing the soundtrack with classic hip-hop tracks, including Tribe’s “Can I Kick It?”, Nas’ “The World is Yours” and Biggie’s “The What,” Levine gets the audience grooving on his flick’s funky vibe from the first frame.

The cast is crucial to the movie’s success as well; Nickelodeon veteran Peck completely reinvents his teen idol image, while Kingsley is a laugh riot as a former straight-arrow spiraling out of control. Best of all is Thirlby, whose sleepy-eyed sexiness puts her in the realm of such vintage high school dream girls as Phoebe Cates and Jennifer Connelly. Although the film falls flat in some of its more dramatic moments, overall The Wackness provides a pleasant mid-summer buzz.