This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon: July 23, 2008 - The other day, I was trying to tell a couple of friends half my age when a certain event occurred and I said, "It wasn't that long ago, maybe in the '80s."
They looked at me oddly, and I realized that they had been children in the '80s and the decade was a long time ago indeed, for them if not for me. To put it in terms of the electronic revolution that so dominates our lives these days, I remember a time when nobody had a television; they could barely remember the days before everyone had a personal computer. My perspective inevitably means I will react differently from someone half my age to movies that focus on the recent past, particularly when the principal protagonist is a teenager.
Which brings us to "The Wackness," set in 1994, mostly among teenagers. That year, it seems, hip young white people, mostly taking their cue from black hip-hop artists, called things "dope" (good), "wack" (bad) and "mad" (very - as in, "That girl is mad hot.")
The surprise to me is not that teenagers once spoke these words. What surprises me is the implication that they no longer speak them, at least not the hip ones. Apparently those terms, and a lot of the rest of the slang used in "The Wackness," are inextricably tied to an era now long past, one that seems to me like barely yesterday. There are ’90s youth-culture references in "The Wackness" I will never get. Fortunately, like all good movies, "The Wackness" transcends its era, even if at times young filmmaker Jonathan Levine seems too eager to splash the film with period references.
The movie succeeds because the two characters at the center of it are so believable and so engaging, despite their sometimes maddening foibles and character flaws. And it succeeds because the movie is so well acted, by Josh Peck as young Luke and by Ben Kingsley as his drug-addled shrink, Dr. Squires. Kingsley's character also serves as port of entry into the youth-dominated world of "The Wackness" for older viewers.
It's summer in the city. Josh has just graduated from high school in New York and he is going through his first mid-life crisis. Dr. Squires is maybe 50, and he is going through his umpteenth mid-life crisis. As usual with men, these fellows' mid-life crises are triggered by women; also as usual, the crises come freighted with existential import.
Josh, who is in apparently unrequited love with his shrink's stepdaughter, deals dope from a flavored-ice cart he pushes around Midtown Manhattan. Josh pays for his sessions with Dr. Squires with bags of marijuana. In the fall, Josh will enter his default choice of colleges -- his "safe school." He is depressed.
Dr. Squires, a wild-haired '60s refugee whose younger wife is increasingly hostile, is depressed, too, bored to near the point of immobility with listening to the predictable problems of adolescents. He unsuccessfully tries to slake his ennui with pills and pot.
The movie opens with Josh telling the doctor that he doesn't have anything to talk about for their session.
"I could make something up," Josh offers.
"Make something up," replies the doctor, in what is either a sneaky ploy to force Josh to reveal himself unintentionally, or sheer lazy indifference. I'm betting on the latter.
So, we ask ourselves, is that all there is for these fellows? Dope and mediocrity and gloom?
Well, there is also friendship, and that's what saves Josh and Dr. Squires - as well as the movie -- from the depths of despair, from the fearful grasp of “The Wackness.”
Dr. Squires's wife finally tells him she is leaving him, and Josh also finds himself undone by love. Desperate for company, the two men begin hanging out together. Dr. Squires accompanies Josh on his rounds, which gets him - and Josh -- out of the psychiatrist's gloomy office and into the sunlight. Dr. Squires discovers he has a knack for the business, and even makes new friends among Josh's regular customers. He feels better, as if he is actually accomplishing something, exchanging a product for money. And Josh, partly because he is helping someone else whose problems are not really all that tragic, discovers that his life is not so bad, either.
"The Wackness" is a comedy, and an often-funny one, and I wouldn't recommend pondering its meaning at any length or in any depth. And some people may be turned off, so to speak, by the insistent druginess of the movie, although the pills Dr. Squires is popping -- and prescribing to his patients -- are viewed in a negative light. But the movie is so cleverly written and acted; does such a good job of uncovering a funky segment of the hip youth-culture underbelly in the '90s, and is ultimately, against all odds, so cheerful, that it is highly recommended. And not just for people who can barely remember a time before everyone had a computer. Appropriately although most of the soundtrack consists of hip-hop from the '90s, it ends with a song that spans the generations: Mott the Hoople's sweetly, sadly sardonic "All the Young Dudes."
Opens July 25
Harper Barnes, author of "Never Been a Time," is a regular contributor to the Beacon.