Review: The Wackness (2008)

*** (out of ****)

     "I see the dopeness in everything, and you just see the wackness."
 --Olivia Thirlby to Josh Peck in "The Wackness."

     Part drug pusher's dream vacation, part buddy movie, part
coming-of-age like story, "The Wackness" is as wacky as it is wonderful,
a sepia-toned love letter to NYC punctuated by blazing hip-hop and two
winning performances in Josh Peck and Ben Kingsley.

     For Peck and Kingsley make for an oddly engaging couple in Jonathan
Levine's audacious comedy about sex, drugs, and unexpected friendships.

     New York, Summer, 1994.  The thermometer tops one hundred as Luke
Shapiro (Peck), big time drug dealer and small time reluctant virgin,
graduates high school and sets his sights on college.  Also on his
radar, at first peripherally, pedantically, is Stephanie (Olivia
Thirlby), stepdaughter of his shrink, Dr. Jeffery Squires, M.D.
(Kingsley), whom Luke has been seeing, "for depression."  To pay his
way, and to help stave off his parents' (with whom he lives) imminent
eviction, Luke sells Method Man-supplied weed out of an ice cream
vendor's cart that reads "F ESH & DEL CIOUS ICES."

     High-billed Olsen twin Mary-Kate (as a free-spirited, summer of
love-styled hippie) has two brief scenes (sans sib) as does doe-eyed
Jane Adams as Elanor, a spacey regular on Luke's route.  And sultry
Famke Janssen plays Squires' sultry yet dissatisfied wife.

     Staunch support from the typically fine Thirlby aside--she's picked
some very interesting assignments to date, hasn't she?--this is Peck's
and Kingley's picture from the opening scene in Squires' dingy, hazy
office where dust motes intermingle with reefer smoke.  Imagine Casey
Affleck grafted onto Adam Sandler--cuddly and goofball but with a real
presence: that's Peck in this film.  As for Kingsley it's as if Harvey
Keitel swallowed up Peter Dinklage whole and then spat him back out
again a soliloquy at a time.  Peck's and Kingley's back and forth
repartee is invariably priceless but there's more to "The Wackness" than
the expected bong-o belly laughs (the film finds it has more in common
with "Juno" than, say, "Harold & Kumar," and not simply because of
Thirlby's grounding presence).  Writer/director Levine takes some real
chances, both with his characters and his stylistic approach to the
medium, but comes out on top almost every time.

     As he did in "You Kill Me" (alongside TÃ(c)a Leoni), Kingsley once
again proves a total team player.  He looks great--neat goatee; shaggy,
unkempt hair; sniffer as pronounced as the Central Park skyline; all
topped off with Stallone's pork pie hat--and delivers up a performance
that's both ridiculous and tender, scary yet lovable.  Peck matches him
joint for joint, with Levine's screenplay taking him some daring places,
emotionally.  For all its neat aural and visual assaults (including pot
shots at that son'bitch Giuliani) the film works best when it's simply
Peck and Kingsley trading talk (and grass).  It's then that something
natural and credible emerges.

     "The Wackness," an assured and engaging male bonding picture
punctuated by one man's--all men's--innate drive to score, dwarfs other
stoner comedies with its intelligence, boys-gone-wild humor, and
surprising compassion.  It's anything but dopey.

--
David N. Butterworth, Film Editor
www.offoffoff.com/film | d...@dca.net