It seems we’re all trying to forget the nineties, at least until they’re far enough gone that we can remember them fondly. “The Wackness,” a new film by Jonathan Levin, is quick to paste a golden gloss of nostalgia over those not-so-long-bygone days, and make us long for the era of the lively O.J. trial and a living Biggie Smalls.
Luke Shapiro (a mopey, dopey Josh Peck) is a senior in high school looking to fit in and, more importantly, get laid. He’s tired of showing up to parties to sell weed and then watching from the sidelines as everyone else enjoys it. Luckily he’s got help—mental help—in the form of wacky therapist Dr. Shapiro (Ben Kingsley) who turns out to need more help than Luke does.
The counseling is hardly healthful—Luke pays for his sessions in dime baggies—but the two begin an outside relationship that lies somewhere between that of dealer and junkie and father and son.
Luke has his eye on Stephanie, a gorgeous brunette. When Dr. Shapiro tells Luke he should “stick his tongue down her throat” before she has a chance to react, he doesn’t realize he’s talking about Stephanie; she happens to be his step-daughter.
She takes and interest in Luke and the two begin a summer romance, endearing, fleeting, and peppered with nineties slang (“I got mad love for you, shorty. I wanna listen to Boyz II Men when I’m with you”). The relationship lasts for a weekend or so (I have to be honest: my press screening for this film had a reel switched. Consequently I got a sneak peek at the third act about twenty minutes into the second) when Stephanie is off after the next dopey guy. Luke find himself experiencing his first real heartbreak, abetted, though in no way constructively aided, by Dr. Shapiro.
Ben Kingsley is a rip roaring good time, though we never had any doubts he would be. There’s not much to spoil (though this is the point where we’re going to try): Luke overcomes his pain and goes off to college, as all characters of his type tend to, and Shapiro divorces his wife but manages to carry on.
“The Wackness” often times bites off more than it can chew. That is to say, it reaches for dopeness, but when it does it too often finds itself with the opposite. It is stalled by those grandiose reachings but never derailed, and is best when it chugs merrily along, light-as-fluff and gleaming in its nostalgic glow.
