Can this trip back to the NYC of the '90s live up to all the Sundance hype?
Every time a movie gets raves at Sundance I'm all hyped up to see it. I'm an indie fan anyway, but the potential for it to be in the company of movies like Little Miss Sunshine, The Squid and the Whale, You Can Count on Me, In the Company of Men, Super Size Me and other Sundance winners is simply intoxicating to me. So when I heard that The Wackness won the Audience Award for Dramatic Film this year, and better yet that friends who saw it at Cannes loved it, I was ready to go.
Firmly ensconced in the New York City of 1994, The Wackness is the story of Luke Shapiro (Josh Peck), a malaise-filled high school senior who pays for his therapy sessions with the equally unhappy and unconventional Dr. Squires (Sir Ben Kingsley) by bartering pot. Although Luke is a likeable enough kid, his social problems clearly stem from a majorly dysfunctional family. His perpetually arguing parents are in such severe debt that he feels he must save up for college himself by selling a record amount of pot to all the smokers being driven underground by Mayor Giuliani's clean-up crusade. He also has a fierce crush on Squires's step-daughter, Stephanie (Olivia Thirlby), who is more of the popular/free-love sort, and busy with family drama of her own.
Unfortunately for me, The Wackness appears to have suffered from a case of overly high expectations. It is billed as a 'coming of age comedy', but I found it strikingly macabre, the humor that is there dampened by the honestly depressing state of affairs that are both Luke and Shapiro's lives. Of course, I'm sure some of this is a factor of the audience with whom I saw it, but nonetheless, it felt much more sad than funny to me, and that's fine, but it's just not what I expected.
Kingsley as usual is great as the vulnerable, complicated Squires, whose life and wife (played by Famke Janssen) are slipping away from him. The relationship between Squires and Luke is unlikely yet makes total sense, and the fact that they both are in their own way at a similar place in their lives despite obstacles like their age gap and social mores makes their friendship all the more poignant. All the characters are interesting and well-played in their own way, including the Phish-following hippie chick, Union (Mary-Kate Olsen). Although her screen time is brief, I will say that I was impressed with her performance, and if her goal is to try to break away from her squeaky clean Full House, Olsen twin image, her turn in this movie absolutely did it for me.
The strongest thing I came away with from The Wackness was how personal a story it was to writer/director Jonathan Levine (All the Boys Love Mandy Lane). As much as he claims that the character of Luke is primarily fictionalized, it is clear when you meet him that in many ways Luke is an extension of himself. From the way he dresses to the way he speaks to the music he listens to, Luke is like Levine's own personal time machine back to that time -- even if the two had different experiences in that time. As a result, The Wackness has the power to polarize the audience -- those who remember New York at that time or perhaps had similar situations will undoubtedly bond strongly to it. Those of us who don't will find it, as I did, somewhat over-hyped.
ReelzChannel Rating: 