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'The Wackness': Stirring the pot

By Roger Moore The Orlando Sentinel

That first sight of Ben Kingsley sucking down a bowl will burn into your memory. You might be watching The Wackness but it's hard to forget that this is Gandhi putting Bic to bong in Jonathan Levine's silly, sappy and ­sympathetic coming-of-age memoir.

Kingsley, the best reason to see the movie, is Jeffrey Squires, a Manhattan shrink who is both a client of and therapist to the movie's protagonist, Luke Shapiro (Josh Peck). Luke is a teenage pot dealer, an alienated ­Manhattanite who has absorbed as much hip-hop culture as he can. He has the backward baseball cap, the hoodie, the new Notorious B.I.G. tape. And he's unhappy. So Dr. Squires trades Luke therapy for dime bags.

It's 1994, Luke has just graduated from high school. He's headed to college. He's making a lot of extra money selling weed. He is the pot dealer the ”cool kids“ want to buy from but never want to hang with.

”I don't need high school friends,“ he narrates, and lies.

It only hurts when he pines over Stephanie (Olivia Thirlby of Juno). She's the gorgeous girl with the killer smile. And she's Dr. Squires' daughter.

Summer's here. Her cool-kid pals are off in Amsterdam and beyond. Luke's around, selling to her stepdad. So they hook up. Their awkward romance is meant to carry the movie, and it does, with Luke fantasizing Stephanie's yearbook bikini photo coming to life, dancing down a sidewalk whose squares light up, Michael Jackson-style, when she kisses him goodnight.

Levine's cute and cutesy film follows two predictable paths. We see Luke's family strife, the money that isn't there, the fights his ­”immature“ parents have over it.

We also see Stephanie's unhappy home, where the chain-­smoking teen and her chain-­smoking mom (Famke Janssen ) barely tolerate the still childish Dr. Squires, who abuses ­prescription drugs and wishes he could turn back the clock.

”Life,“ he tells Luke, ”has a funny way of turning you into who you don't want to be.“

But what Luke wants, more than anything, is to ”chill“ with Stephanie. And no warnings from her stepdad can scare him off. We follow him, Stephanie and stepdad through a summer of not-quite-love, bars, pot deliveries and strife.

The 1994 setting makes the movie feel dated and hip at the same time. Peck plays Luke as literally slack-jawed, not an ­attractive look for any guy.

The movie's benign treatment of drug dealing (except for the heavily armed visits to Luke's ­supplier, the Jamaican Percy — nicely played by Method Man) renders it a background device, the thing that brings Luke into contact with hot Stephanie and her ”weird old guy“ stepdad.

But Kingsley, struggling to find the right American ­pronunciations, dispensing ­wisdom that's wiser than it appears on first hearing and making out with Mary-Kate Olsen, is the reason to see The Wackness. Weird and old, yes. But out there, too, and funnier and wiser, from start to finish, than anything else in The Wackness.