An audience favorite at the Sundance Film Festival, The Wackness is an unremarkable coming-of-ager charting the course of one Luke Shapiro (Josh Peck), an aimless Manhattan kid who can't seem to get laid despite being reasonably attractive and the resident drug dealer at his Upper East Side private school. That's our starting point, a premise almost as unfathomable as the reception this fatally clichéd film received at Sundance.
Unloved and unpopular, Luke descends into depression and seeks the council of an eccentric, substance-abusing shrink (Ben Kingsley, chewing the carpet like nobody's business), whom he pays in dime bags while lusting after the good doctor's smokin' hot stepdaughter (Olivia Thirlby). The movie follows its young hero through the long, hot summer of '94 (a time delineated by constant Giuliani references), as Luke mopes, deals, lusts after his dream girl and watches his parents financially falter and endlessly bicker.
Pretty much all the couples here are squabbling self-medicaters — most notably Kingsley's shrink and his icy, emotionally desensitized wife (Famke Janssen) — and the rampant dysfunction, wall-to-wall broken families, and one-note moroseness all but confirm some of the most negative stereotypes of what constitutes a "Sundance film" these days. Our absurdly virginal hero eventually connects with the girl we all know will break his heart, but that's just one more cliché in a movie that's full of them, while the film's elegant faux-Godfather sepia tones clash violently with the nonstop hip-hop du jour on the soundtrack.
The Wackness (R) Stars Josh Peck, Ben Kingsley, Olivia Thirlby, Famke Janssen, Mary-Kate Olsen, Jane Adams and Method Man. Opens Aug. 1 at local theaters. 2 stars
This article appears in Jul 30 – Aug 5, 2008.