In one scene from The Wackness,"" a girl looks into her lover's eyes and cringingly ponders the fears holding back their relationship, simultaneously revealing where the film's marketing department found the title for this difficult-to-categorize ""artsy"" film.
Clichéd scenes like this typically spell doom for normal films, but in Jonathan Levine's film, such paint-by-number moments are colorized vividly by funky fresh characters and sharp dialogue dripping in the street-smart lingo of 1994 New York City.
The film opens in a therapy session of Dr. Jeff Squires (Ben Kingsley), as pot dealer Luke Shapiro (Josh Peck) reveals that he's having trouble meeting the ladies. Uninterested in discussing the troubles he's having at home or the fact that he's about to begin his last summer before heading to college, Luke obsesses over his need to get laid. As Dr. Squires smokes the weed Luke traded for his therapy session, the drug-addled M.D. plainly offers Luke some crude pointers on meeting and coaxing the ladies, not realizing that Luke intends to apply them to his step-daughter Stephanie (Olivia Thirlby). Luke responds to his advice with a frown: ""I was this close to respecting you."" Dr. Squires replies smugly, ""Big mistake.""
From here the film falls into the fairly standard boy-meets-girl story of love and heartbreak, but the spirit of irreverence from the first few scenes sets up some interesting characters that make this an enjoyable ride nonetheless. Peck plays up his character's admirable tension between awkward fear and street-tough brains, demonstrating how far he's come from the trappings of his work on the tween Nickelodeon comedy ""Drake & Josh."" His character speaks the language of the hip-hop underworld that surrounds his business, latching on to the lingo of Notorious B.I.G.
Eventually, we discover that those rough words only hide his fear of the future and those bone-thug looks only shield his big heart from pain.
Olivia Thirlby, also known as the ""honest to blog"" girl from ""Juno,"" has a breakout performance in her role as Stephanie Squires. Taking on another character written to sound the way ""the kids were talking those days,"" she navigates some awkwardly written period dialogue and turns it into gold. ""I choose to see the dopeness in life. You know what your problem is?"" Olivia asks Luke in the clichéd moment that should have ruined the film. ""You just see the wackness."" It's cheesy, it's very 1994, but for some reason she makes it work and it's impossible not to fall for her free-spirited Stephanie.
Stephanie and Luke's romance develops predictably as their summer reaches its close, with heartbreak and hurt feelings to spare. The ""feelings"" leave something to be desired, as Luke's depression is all but ignored while the story refocuses on Dr. Squires' substance abuse. The deeper themes of regret at indifference to life and burying problems with vices are insightful, but the rushed execution hurts Kingsley's character and holds back the film from true greatness.
Grade: BC
