Review of The Wackness (2008) by Pete L — 30 Jan 2012

The Wackness.

"Life has a funny way of turning you into the one thing you don't want to be.".

Low expectations going in but very happy with it by the end.

Plot: Set in New York City in 1994 during Mayor Giuliani's crackdown on drugs, a psychiatrist named Dr. Squires is having a midlife crisis. He begins a friendship with a teenage drug dealer named Luke, who gives him drugs in exchange for therapy sessions. Luke is dealing with many problems such as depression and the fact that his parents are always fighting. Luke falls for Squires' step-daughter, while Squires falls for Luke's free spirited/hippie friend. This puts a strain on Luke and Squires' friendship but they will each learn something from each other in the end.

This is different from other Comedy/Dramas as it gets funny in the middle rather than having the first half hour funny and the rest of the movie devoted to Drama. There is a lot more drama in this than comedy as the drama is at the beginning and end. Josh Peck's character sounded a bit like Forrest Gump attempting to talk in slang. Peck is absolutely terrible at speaking it and by 20 minutes in I was already annoyed by it. Now don't get me wrong, I think Peck certainly has talent but I think it was wrong to choose him as that character. Now Ben Kingsley fits his character perfectly and does very well. His character is a wise mentor to Luke (think Obi Wan Kenobi on drugs and with a few issues), but is also very funny at times. Kingsley steals the show and I liked his character the most. It's nice to seem in a good role. He's chosen some awful roles in the past decade i.e. the bad guy in Uwe Boll's piece-of-crap movie adaptation of the videogame, Bloodrayne, the main villain in the movie adaptation of the videogame of Prince of Persia, and some other pretty bad movies, but watching him in this shows that he is a great actor who's just made a few mistakes in choosing his roles. It's nice to see one of the Olsen twins doing work again. Mary-Kate has aged beautifully, but she doesn't really fit her hippie character. But she doesn't have that big a role. I kind of wish she did though. Olivia Thirlby is fantastic. She's just as good in this as she was in Juno if not better. I enjoyed the dialogue. Going in I thought it would be downright awful. The slang does get really annoying but that can be overlooked. My one other problem is this; it's very original until the last thirty minutes where everything becomes cliché; i.e. girl ignores guy's many phone calls and messages. We've seen it billions of times in just about every summer romance movie and I truly think the writer could have come up with something better, as the rest of the movie is well written, but it seems he took the easy way out. Still by the end it becomes a good coming of age movie. Total Score: 7.3/10.