THE WACKNESS is a story about both a shrink, Dr. Jeffery Squires (Sir Ben Kingsley) and his patient, Luke Shapiro (Josh Peck), a drug dealer who pays him with the weed he is peddling.  Both have girl problems, Squires with his wife, Kristin (Famke Janssen) and Luke with Squires’ step daughter, Stephanie (Olivia Thirlby).  Writer/director Jonathan weaves an interesting enough tale for the audience to care about the two men while setting it as a period piece.

One wonders the reason Levine set his film in 1994 NYC.  Could it be the hip hop soundtrack of the era he wanted throughout the film or did he want to limit the drugs of the protagonist to just weed and not to the other designer drugs of the 90’s.  As far as accuracy goes, it is odd that Levine allows Luke to peddle his weed by selling ices as a cover without any suspicion.  Does nobody ever stop him to buy an ice-cream?  What ever happened to police patrols in a dodgy neighborhood?  In another scene, Dr. Squires claims to have shagged his good woman all night after finding a bag of blow.  That is physically impossible as blow though increases the sex drive also increases the difficulty of getting a hard on – unless the good doctor has got a stash of Viagra.  But it looks hardly possible to make $26,000 doing this sort of work for one summer.  But what really struck as true is what Dr. Squires really thinks of Luke that he does not want his step daughter to marry a drug dealer.

The character driven narrative is fortunate to have its two main characters performed well by Kingsley and Peck.  The fact that the older Dr. Squires is the immature one buying dope and the mature one is the teen selling it is a nice take.  The supporting characters, particularly Luke’s parents and Luke’s source, Percy (Method Man) are interesting enough to provide a distracting edge. 

THE WACKNESS has the feel of a sincere film particularly during the first half in that Levine really cares for his characters.  Levine’s promise as a talented director seems etched with THE WACKNESS and the upcoming horror flick ALL THE BOYS LOVE MANDY LANE.  His eye for the quirky and his non-conformance of his film to a Hollywood ending marks THE WACKNESS as an above average effort.  The film won the audience award for best dramatic film at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.