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</script></div>{/googleAds}Send the kiddies outside or to their rooms to play—especially the devoted and impressionable ones that followed the belly-laughing, pubescent â"shenanigans" of Nickelodeon's Drake & Josh (TV, 2004-2007)—because â"Josh," the former, has been blown up and now, the latter's, all grown up. In The Wackness, maturating young-adult actor Josh Peck takes a shrewdly calculated step toward shedding the rollie-pollie Josh Nichol persona he chubbily inhabited for four years. Now in his early 20's, a slimmed down Peck jumps at the chance to play 18-year-old Luke Shapiro, an aimless college-bound drug dealer who voluntarily attends mental health therapy sessions.

Set in NYC, taking place over the course of summer 1994, The Wackness is a coming-of-age character study providing ample appeal for today's Gen-Xers who're fast staring down age forty's loaded barrel. Heavy doses of the The Notorious B.I.G.'s thumping rhythms and the clear intoxicating libations of Zima the alcopop—both discontinued some decade-and-a-half henceforth—may be enough to lure the cohort down memory lane, only to then receive reminding of how glad they are to have navigated the once landscaped minefield still in one piece on into adulthood.

The WacknessFrom a dysfunctional home in which Mom and Dad embrace the art of living beyond their means, both parents financially strapped, physically abusing one another with equity, arguing, teetering on the brink of eviction from their comfortable apartment, Luke is riding a roller coaster. He's playing the apathetic, drug-dealer role one minute, the fiscally responsible college-bound son the next. Barely old enough to vote, Luke is craving an outlet to express himself so that he can find a sense of direction and purpose.

Not your typical protagonist, Luke's a high volume marijuana dealer. His wheels spinning as he contemplates his future during those precious enviable months between high school graduation and starting college, Luke seeks the refuge of his therapist's counsel—Dr. Squires (Ben Kingsley)—to help him make sense of the world. Kudos to Luke for trying to peel back the onion that is his psyche's complex layers as he tries to become a better person: Too bad he's trading therapy-for-weed with Dr. Feelgood to do it.

Plugged into a teenager's man-child brain, Luke is, not surprisingly, preoccupied with sex, in particular a lack thereof. He's a Chronic-smoking chronic, a seven-times-a-day self-pleasuring virgin. Add the fact that he's not popular; it's not hard to imagine why a celibate, loser-pusher is an ideal patient for psychological treatment.

Groomed like a tattered and battered cross between Harvey Keitel and comedian Bill Maher, Kingsley's longhaired, using Dr. Squires doesn't shrink from the irony that comes with cautioning Luke to give due consideration in asking himself: What's wrong with a drug-peddling 18-year-old that's not getting any action? This warped point-of-view seems amusing enough for viewers until the married Dr. Squires unleashes his own latent libido on Luke's female friend, Union (Mary-Kate Olsen). Watching the 65-year-old Kingsley seduce, inside a phone booth, a scarcely legal Olsen—he being more than 40 years her senior—is, no matter your degree of American Beauty (1999) roused open-mindedness, in a word plus a word, stomach-churning creepy.

Behind the courage of weed Luke's able to heed quack Squires' mind-altered words of wisdom, beginning to court the healer's stepdaughter, Stephanie (Olivia Thirlby). No amount of medicinal consumption can disabuse Squires' notion that Luke's pursuit of daddy's daughter is a terrible idea. Squires is a victim of his own advice. As the romantic arc between Luke and Stephanie builds momentum, so does that of the movie's. Luke's short-lived optimism reaches a fever pitch when, after dropping off his new girlfriend at her apartment doorstep, his wistfully departing footsteps incrementally light up the sidewalk â"Billie Jean" style.

None of this newfound enchantment, as Dr. Squires warns, can last, granted, because Stephanie is her father's daughter; a puerile black widow of sorts, chewing boys up and spitting them out at the Heartbreak Exit. These supporting performances, along with Famke Janssen as Squires' impassive wife and Method Man as Luke's ebullient dope supplier, are solid if not the sum of their parts, leaving a sense of frustration for what The Wackness could have been rather than what it isn't.


Component Grades
Movie
DVD
3 Stars
3 Stars
DVD Experience
3 Stars

DVD

DVD Details:

Screen Formats: 2.35:1

Subtitles: English; French; Spanish; Closed Captioned

Language and Sound: Closed Captioned; Language and Sound:; English: Dolby Digital 5.1; French-Canadian: Dolby Digital 5.1

Other Features: Color; interactive menus; scene access; audio commentary; behind-the-scenes featurette; making-of featurette; deleted scenes.

* Commentary
o Feature-length commentary track with Josh Peck and Director Jonathan Levine
* Featurettes
o Luke Shapiro's Dope Show
o Keeping It Real: A Day in the Life of Jonathan Levine
o Time in a Bottle: Behind-the-scenes of The Wackness
* Deleted Scenes

Number of Discs: 1 with Keepcase Packaging

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