The Wackness

I had a single purpose for seeing this movie: 1990s rap music. The lead character loves it and I had heard that the music becomes like a character in the film. Nostalgia doesn't usually hold a huge power over me, but nostalgia featuring hip-hop from 1994 does. Nothing else really matter to me going in, not the big fuss over Ben Kingsley being dry humped by one of the Olsen twins and not that a former Nickelodeon kid was starring in an R-Rated movie. Of course, the single focus of 1990s hip-hop doesn't mean it would be a good movie on top of that.

Set in the summer of 1994, we meet a soft spoken broken teenager named Luke Shapiro(Josh Peck). Shapiro's family doesn't get along and they are having problems. He just graduated from High School without a single friend. He escapes the world by putting on his headphones, pushing play and listening to the sounds of Nas, Notorious B.I.G. and A Tribe Called Quest. He spends his days selling weed and talking to his psychiatrist, Dr. Squires(Kingsley), whom he trades sessions for weed. Dr. Squires is a very sad lonely man trapped in a loveless marriage with a rambunctious step daughter, Stephanie (the ridiculously beautiful Olivia Thirlby). Luke wants desperately to have sex with Stephanie and one day they end up hanging out. Stephanie kind of digs Luke and they start hanging out more. Dr. Squires warns Luke that Stephanie is just bored because all of her friends are gone for the summer. When Luke's parents get an eviction notice, Luke steps up his weed selling, using Dr. Squires' connections to sell it to people with more money; they form an odd friendship and eventually realize they are each other's only true friend. In the process, Luke creates a mixtape for both Dr. Squires and Stephanie and Dr. Squires creates a mixtape for Luke featuring non rap music.

"The Wackness" refers to a line in the movie where Stephanie proclaims to Luke "I see the dopeness in everything, and you just see the wackness." This kind of sums up the movie for me. The character of Luke is not only a total downer, Josh Peck's portrayal is annoying. His voice rarely goes over a whisper and often cracks in it's quietness. He has the right look and the right attitude for it, but everything else is kind of all wrong to me. The character is supposed to be unsure of himself, but so often it felt like the actor was unsure of himself, not the character. Ben Kingsley does a great job as the mentor who has his own issues. It is a bit of a mannered performance, but he does get all of the best dialog and the meatiest moments in the movie (read: the last 25 minutes). For her part, Olivia Thirlby is pretty much awesome. Even though their paring feels forced, she does her best to make it seem like she digs Josh Peck's Luke. She totally rocks a bikini and is super cute when called upon to be as such. Famke Janssen has a brief appearance as Dr. Squires wife, but doesn't really do much and all of the other roles are merely cameos, like The Olsen twin.

One of my bigger complaints about the movie deal with the narrative itself. Often times, when movies have more than one main character, it works, but here I was never entirely comfortable with it. Dr. Squires is presented as a supporting character, but at one point in the film, he kind of takes over and the story becomes about him. It became unclear what was going on. I found myself wondering why I should care about this Dr. Squires. I wanted more of a coming of age story and less of a I-am-trapped-in-a-boring-marriage movie. By the time it refocuses on Luke I was pretty much bored by the entire thing. Maybe I should just be mad at the trailers for leading me to believe the story was going to be a coming of age story, but I am not sure the director really knew what he wanted. In the opening sequence, Luke gets on the subway, sees a girl in a skirt, focuses on her and then talks about his fantasies and in a dream bubble, the fantasy comes to life. In a scene where he is happy later, the sidewalk lights up to throw us back to Billie Jean, but those are the only moments of such a thing. Instead of keeping with that theme, those two instances just come off seeming weird because they were not followed through.

There are some great moments though. Pretty much every scene between Peck and Thirlby is nicely paced and has nice dialog. They have a nice easy chemistry and the long sequence of them on the beach is a fun, sexy and charming. Also, the music is quite excellent. I was hoping for more of the nostalgic 1990s rap music having seen the track listing from Sundance, but the movie got re cut and stuff had to be lost due to an inability to get the rights to certain music. The music doesn't really become the secondary character I had hopes for, but they did a pretty good job of picking the right songs to fit certain moments. My only music complaint was that during the scene involving Method Man, where he is introducing Luke to Notorious B.I.G, the song he is playing features Method Man. While that song is one of Biggie's best tracks, it took me out of the movie watching Method Man act, while a Method Man verse is playing in the background.

I can't say I really enjoyed the movie because I spent a good portion of the second half checking my watch and wondering when and how it would end. Maybe the underground hype mislead me into believing I would be watching something new and interesting, but in the end the whole thing was pretty typical. The nostalgia only goes so far.

Final Grade: C-