Ben Kingsley makes sappy 'Wackness' worth seeing
By Roger Moore
the orlando sentinel
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 08.28.2008
That first sight of Ben Kingsley smoking a bowl will burn into your memory. You may be watching "The Wackness," but it's hard to forget that this is Gandhi putting Bic to bong in Jonathan Levine's silly, sappy and sympathetic coming-of-age memoir.
Kingsley, the best reason to see the movie, is Jeffrey Squires, a Manhattan shrink who is both a client of and therapist to the movie's protagonist, Luke Shapiro (Josh Peck). Luke is a teenage pot dealer, an alienated Manhattanite who has absorbed as much hip-hop culture as he can.And he's unhappy. So Dr. Squires trades Luke therapy for dime bags.
It's 1994, and Luke has just graduated from high school. He is headed to college. He's making a lot of extra money selling weed. He is the pot dealer the "cool kids" want to buy from but never want to hang with.
It only hurts when he pines over Stephanie (Olivia Thirlby of "Juno"). She's the gorgeous girl with the killer smile. And she's Dr. Squires' stepdaughter.
Summer is here. Her cool-kid pals are off in Amsterdam and beyond. Luke is around, selling to her stepdad. So they hook up. Their awkward romance is meant to carry the movie, and it does, with Luke fantasizing Stephanie's yearbook bikini photo coming to life, dancing down a sidewalk whose squares light up, Michael Jackson-style, when she kisses him good night.
Levine's cute and cutesy film follows two predictable paths. We see Luke's family strife. We also see Stephanie's unhappy home, where chain-smoking teen and chain-smoking mom (Famke Janssen, vacant, self-involved, tuned-out) barely tolerate the still-childish Dr. Squires, who abuses prescription drugs and wishes he could turn back the clock.
But Kingsley, struggling to find the right American pronunciations, dispensing wisdom that's wiser than it appears on first hearing and making out with Mary-Kate Olsen, is the reason to see "The Wackness." Weird and old, yes. But out there, too, and funnier and wiser, from start to finish, than anything else in "The Wackness."
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