News

Written and directed

by Josh Levine

Starring Josh Peck, Ben Kingsley and Olivia Thirlby

Classification: 14A

Set against hip-hopping New York in 1994, when mayor Rudolph Giuliani arrived to strip the city of its vice and personality, The Wackness is one of those Sundance coming-of-age films, with all that implies: a surfeit of forced edginess, kooky characters, cynicism-coated sentimentality and self-absorbed angst.

That's not to write The Wackness off, if you'll excuse the expression. What the film has going for it is a few insights into young love and an appealing performance by Josh Peck (Drillbit Taylor) as a sleepy-eyed, slack-jawed teen trying desperately to maintain the illusion of cool.

Peck plays an Upper East Side Jewish kid, Luke Shapiro, in that critical summer between high school and university. He's obsessed with rap (Biggie Smalls, Tupac) and pot, worried about losing his virginity and trying to block out his parents, who are locked in an ongoing financial and marital crisis. He pays for his therapy with a maturity-challenged shrink, Dr. Squires (Ben Kingsley), with baggies full of grass.

Squires, a middle-aged mess with an ice-cold wife (Famke Janssen), gets his vicarious kicks from his young patient, becoming Josh's pal, surrogate father and companion in misery. Though addicted to pot and jacked up on prescription medicines himself, he has some paternal advice for Luke: Forget about drugs – get laid.

Some minimal dramatic conflict here is that Josh falls for the doctor's stepdaughter, Stephanie (Olivia Thirlby, from Juno), one of the cool, rich girls who is “mad out of my league.” Yet, by chance, she's stuck in the city for the summer, bored and willing to entertain him for a while. Stephanie has no respect for her stepfather, and though Dr. Squires goes through the motions of paternal guardianship, his heart isn't in it. There's a shrewd scene where he makes an attempt to connect with her, but, upon being rebuffed, settles down to watch a Law & Order episode.

In any case, the doctor is in no position to criticize. Luke introduces the doctor to another of Luke's customers, a spinning, flaxen-haired hippie chick of barely legal age (Mary-Kate Olsen) with a retro fondness for the Grateful Dead. After too many beers, the doctor ends up in a telephone booth with his tongue down the girl's throat. It isn't pretty, though the Sir Ben/Mary-Kate stunt smooch has been The Wackness's biggest selling point.

Finally, the movie gets past its gimmicks to its crux, which is a first-love/first-heartbreak story, and for 10 minutes or so, it achieves some emotional traction. When her parents take a trip to try to rekindle their failing marriage, Stephanie invites Luke to her family's Fire Island retreat. She's looking for a weekend diversion; he's having a life-changing experience. In the cringe-making line of dialogue that gives the movie its title, she explains to him that while he only sees the “wackness” of life, she sees only the “dopeness.”

Otherwise, the details about their differences feel right: Stephanie's confident with her body; Luke wears a T-shirt to the beach or in bed. He manages to get everything wrong sexually until he gets it right and then, in his euphoria, finishes the weekend with a big faux pas, when he spills out that he's in love with her.

Shot down, back in the city, Luke and his shrink meet again, in mid-descent, commiserate over handfuls of pills and misogynist Biggie Smalls rap lyrics (“Bitches, I like 'em brainless/ Guns I like 'em stainless steel.…”). Around this point, you remember the downside of drug use: People get so damned repetitive and mistake mind farts for insight.

Presumably, we're supposed to find something heartwarming in the bonding between the two emotionally wounded men from different generations, but it's unconvincing. Kingsley, using some kind of American gangster accent and a bad wig, is miscast and clowns shamelessly. (His performance is symptomatic of the financing of too many American indie films: Producers seek established actors who can draw investors; the established actors take the parts so they can overact.) For all of Kingsley's hamming, he can't overshadow Peck's mournful performance. Nor can you forget the film's reminder that the cruellest thing you can say to a teenager is that these are the best years of his life.