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Wackness, The
Sony Pictures Classics


8.0

based on 31 reviews
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based on 12 votes
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MPAA RATING: R for pervasive drug use, language and some sexuality

Starring Josh Peck, Sir Ben Kingsley, Method Man, Mary Kate Olsen, Olivia Thirlby, Famke Janssen, and Aaron Yoo

The Wackness centers on a troubled high school student named Luke Shapiro--a teenage pot dealer who forms a friendship with Dr. Jeffrey Squires, a psychiatrist and kindred lost soul. When the doctor proposes that Luke trade him weed for therapy sessions, the two begin to explore both New York City and their own depression. (Sony Picture Classics)

GENRE(S):	Comedy \| Drama
WRITTEN BY:	Jonathan Levine
DIRECTED BY:	Jonathan Levine
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: January 6, 2009 Theatrical: July 3, 2008
RUNNING TIME:	95 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

A funny, touching mood piece.

Film Threat Zack Haddad

If you have ever experienced the crushing effect of young love, you owe it to yourself to check out this gem of a dark comedy.

The Hollywood Reporter Duane Byrge

A tightly packed entertainment. It explodes through familiar teen-transition territory with dark ironies, but, all the while, touches are sentiments.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Not everything in The Wackness works and there are times when the divergent serious/comedic tones clash instead of complementing each other. However, in spite of its flaws, the production gets us to care about the characters and their situations.

USA Today Claudia Puig

Both darkly funny and life-affirming, in an offbeat and offhanded way.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Nostalgic for those bad old days, The Wackness was shot at a time when it actually looked like "America's Mayor" was going to be in a position to perform a similar cleanup on the entire country. That, of course, turned out to be a pipe dream

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

A smart comedy that serves as both bittersweet coming-of-age tale and '90s nostalgia piece, The Wackness has the feel of authenticity about it, even if some of its details (the ice cream cart, and the therapist's bong, for two) seem a bit much.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

What saves this movie, which won this year's audience award at Sundance, from being boring are performances by two actors who see a chance to go over the top and aren't worried about the fall on the other side.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

A modest but well-observed respite from coming-of-age clichés. Most of them, anyway.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

The most adventuresome element in The Wackness isn't its pop-culture skin but the unlikely friendship of Luke and Squires...As buddies, they're a kick. But you wish they had a kickier picture to support them.

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

The dopest thing about The Wackness is Thirlby, who, after supporting turns in "Juno" and "Snow Angels," is quickly becoming reason enough to see any film she's in.

NPR Bob Mondello

The story's not really about youthful indiscretions. It's more a tale of a young man struggling toward maturity, even as an older man struggles to abandon it. With that story, and that offbeat friendship at its center, The Wackness will likely strike plenty of chords with plenty of audiences.

Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir

Nothing is surprising, that is, except the fact that the film has a big heart, a core of sweetness and tremendous cinematic ambition.

Variety Dennis Harvey

The Amerindie annals are over-full of withdrawn male loners hoping to quirk or cathart themselves out of teenage purgatory. But like "Donnie Darko," "Thumbsucker" and a few others, The Wackness treads this familiar terrain with assurance and distinction.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

The best thing about it is Peck, who shows you the sweet, virginal kid hiding inside the outlaw poseur.

Austin Chronicle Kimberley Jones

A crowd-pleasing portrait of boys-who-will-be-men-who-will-be-boys.

TV Guide Ken Fox

A deeply personal coming-of-age story steeped in heady nostalgia and all the creative myopia that too often comes with it.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

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.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

Disappointingly, the movie runs along the track of many earlier coming-of-age dramas, with appointed station stops at Cynicism, Puppy Love, Puppy Sex, Puppy Heartbreak, and Greater Wisdom.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

An almost-there comedy with diverting compensations.

Slate Dana Stevens

The Wackness may not have much that's new to say about being 17--it's a fairly standard coming-of-age drama with a couple of noteworthy performances--but it's a definitive compendium of trivia about 1994 (by Levine's lights, the best year ever).

The New York Times A.O. Scott

The movie he (Josh Peck) is in, The Wackness, written and directed by Jonathan Levine, makes a good-faith effort to steer clear of such clichés, and succeeds and fails in roughly equal measure.

Village Voice Nick Pinkerton

All the drug-slinging material's counterfeit, but the script is refreshingly straight-faced in looking at the strange relationship between white boys and rap.

Empire Nick De Semlyen

An unlikely buddy comedy that comes to life whenever Kingsley appears - he doesn't so much steal the show as roll it into a fat blunt and smoke it.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

Kingsley is amusing to watch, however, even though he overdoses on strangeness. He's like a superannuated hippie crossed with the swami he just played in "The Love Guru."

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

When it's good, it's good, and when it fails, it's still clear what Levine was trying to do.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

Self-indulgent and needlessly complicated for what it ultimately delivers.

Los Angeles Times Jan Stuart

Emulating its hero's recklessly independent spirit, The Wackness aspires to be something more than your average psychiatrist-bashing, dysfunctional-parents coming-of-age dramedy à la "Running With Scissors." It snows us with more visual flash than it knows what to do with.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

The Wackness' main draw is Kingsley's giddily over-the-top performance as a pothead, and the film delights in showing Gandhi sparking a huge bong or making out with Mary-Kate Olsen in a phone booth.

New York Magazine David Edelstein

The movie feels autobiographical--emotionally authentic (with a fair amount of bitterness toward women) and somewhat unshaped.

New York Daily News Joe Neumaier

Occasionally stumbles into charm but more often is just wayward and hazy. It makes you hungry for a real movie from writer-director Jonathan Levine.

The average user rating for this movie is 8.0 (out of 10) based on 12 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Jay H. gave it a6:
The acting is terrific, but it is a rather dreary story. Well written, nicely edited and directed. The characters are well developed. I can't see how on earth this can be classified as a comedy.

Chad S. gave it a7:
The ice cart that Luke Shapiro(Josh Peck) pushes around the borough to facilitate his summer drug operation couldn't be a more conspicuous front. But the ice cart does work as a metaphor for Rudolph Giuliani's gentrification of New York during his seven-year reign as mayor, when the future 9/11 hero and presidential hopeful told all the Central Park hookers and drug dealers to go home like a real-life Travis Bickle. Percy(Method Man) went underground while a new wave of drug pushers ambled through the city undetected. A Tribe Called Quest's "Can U Kick It?", which contains a sample of Lou Reed's "Walk on the Wild Side", sounds primordial, as if the ghost of Martin Scorsese's New York("All the animals come out at night- whores, skunk p******, buggers, queens, dopers, junkies, sick, venal. Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets.") came home to roost and wondered where all the hookers in Central Park went. Even the drug dealers are different. Dr. Squires(Ben Kingsley) remembers a time when "the man"("I'm waiting for...") was a popular dude. "The Wackness", a mid-nineties period piece, is about an unpopular pot dealer in therapy, who's in love the therapist's daughter, a girl that's way out of his league. "The Wackness" is "The Sopranos" meets "Say Anything", on pot. Pete Tosh was right: "Doctors smoke it," too. Stephanie(Olivia Thirlby) sees things in terms of "dopeness" and "wackness". The film's dopeness can be attributed to Joshua Peck's natural performance as a shy kid who hides his emasculation behind the swagger and machismo of rap. Thank god he's not into Morrissey, or else Stephanie would never have f****d him. Luke's relationship with the pothead shrink is schematic and overfamiliar, save for the fact that he's a hilariously bad mentor. But there's wackness, too. The film spends an inordinate amount of time on the doctor's marital problems. Sometimes "The Wackness" forgets who the main character is. It should be about an ordinary person, not "Ordinary People".

Lisa B. gave it an8:
Josh Peck delivers a stereotype-busting performance in The Wackness. He shows himself to be an actor versus a child star. Ben Kingsley is awesome as usual.

Rronnie R. gave it a6:
6 at best and being generous the kid was quite entertaining but ben kinsgley was a bit overdone in the role, my girlfriend loved it though thought ben was stupendous.

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Wackness, The Sony Pictures Classics

Wackness, The
Sony Pictures Classics