Weak weed

Set in the ’90s, Sundance hit The Wackness
is meandering and forgettable

by MATTHEW HAYS

There’s something vaguely satisfying about getting work done early. You know, not anxious about a deadline being missed and that sort of thing. Thus I thought I was in a bonus situation a couple of weeks ago, when I would attend a screening of a low-budget Sundance crowd-pleaser, The Wackness.

Trouble is, with that much time passed, so has the movie. This is such a forgettable, wafer-thin independent feature that virtually all of it has slipped my mind. Thank God for my careful note-taking capabilities.

Set in the summer of 1994, The Wackness shows us one young man (played by Josh Peck), who finds himself dealing pot to make a few extra bucks while living in Manhattan. He has a therapist (played by Ben Kingsley), who tokes during their rap sessions. Kingsley offers up some of the film’s most genuinely funny moments. He also has a hot daughter, who Peck desperately wants to bed.

This is a Sundance movie all right. You know the template: wounded male protagonist meanders his way through vaguely thought-out screenplay, while trying to bed a gal he’s smitten with. It’s well meaning enough, but not terribly original.

The other strange thing about this entry is that there’s no real discernable reason for it to be set in ’94. The film’s writer-director, Jonathan Levine, appears to want to say something about Giuliani’s New York, but it’s unclear what that is precisely. That pot was more readily available in Manhattan back then? For a film that touts its period setting, it just makes the entire exercise seem more pointless.

One thing that does become clear about filmmaking in general is that all those film schools have pumped out a huge number of talented cinematographers. Ask any producer and they’ll tell you they can now hire someone who can make everything look like a high-gloss shampoo commercial for very little money. The Wackness certainly looks good. But therein lies a huge problem with contemporary cinema: many of these films look slick, but the scripts clearly desperately needed reworking at the pre-production stage. What movies lack today more than anything is half-decent writing.

The Wackness opens this
Friday, July 25

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