The Wackness

Release Date: Friday 29 August 2008
Certificate: 15
Runtime: 98mins

Friday 29th August 2008, 2:30PM BST.

Jonathan Levine’s hip follow-up to All The Boys Love Mandy Lane is a quirky rites of passage drama set in 1994 New York; a city bumping and grinding to DJ Jazzy Jeff And The Fresh Prince, A Tribe Called Quest and R Kelly.

‘I am Luke Shapiro, I am a drug dealer.

Hear my cry,’ explains the narrator of this beguiling story, a misfit high school student who supplies the locals with weed.

One of his regular customers is psychiatrist Dr Squires (Sir Ben Kingsley), who pays for his habit with weekly sessions to dissect Luke’s fraught home situation.

A fragile bond of trust develops between Luke (Josh Peck) and the crazed medic, whose personal philosophies on life include, ‘Never trust anyone who doesn’t smoke pot or listen to Bob Dylan.’ However, professional ties are strained when Luke develops a crush on Squires’ daughter Stephanie (Olivia Thirlby), a beautiful and vivacious chip off the self-analyzing block.

‘I see the dopeness in everything, and you just see the wackness,’ she informs Luke, encouraging her young paramour to find a glimmer of hope in his seemingly hopeless existence.