Writer and director Jonathan Levine’s The Wackness is a coming-of-age film in which the young grow up fast and grown-ups retreat quickly into adolescence. It’s set in the sweltering summer heat of New York in 1994. The gangsta swagger of hip-hop is seeping into the lives of young, middle-class white Americans, who, in the pursuit of cool, suckle on “blunts” and talk like blacks. Meanwhile, the new mayor, Rudy Giuliani, is planning to clean up the city’s mean streets.

Against this backdrop of urban renewal, Levine’s characters are falling apart. Luke Shapiro (Josh Peck) finds himself lost and lonely, stuck in that summer limbo after high school and just before college. He is a depressed teenager and drug dealer (marijuana only). One of his clients is his therapist, Dr Squires (Ben Kingsley), a lonely depressive who acts like a teenager. During a session with Luke, the doc whips out a bong and lights up. “He smokes more weed than I do, it’s pathetic,” complains his stepdaughter, Stephanie (Olivia Thirlby), to Luke.

Luke thinks the solution to his problem lies in a prescription of “happy pills”. No, says Dr Squires: go out and fall in love, make mistakes, live and, most important of all, get laid — which is exactly what the married and miserable doc wants to do. Doctor and patient have much in common. Luke hates his squabbling parents, who are on the verge of being evicted from their home. Squires hates his young wife, Kristen (Famke Janssen), who has already evicted him from her life. So doctor and dealer become friends. But when Luke turns his attention to Stephanie, Squires warns him to stay away.

For the bored Stephanie, Luke becomes a friend by default. She accompanies him as he pushes his ice-cream cart full of dope across the city, taking care of his kooky clientele. Then, during a passionate weekend away, Luke declares his love to her, with unexpected results.

It’s good to see a coming-of-age film that avoids the easy option of feelgood nostalgia. Though its hip-hop soundtrack — in particular, the early work of the Notorious B.I.G. — may evoke a few fond memories for those who were teenagers in the 1990s,

Levine’s film doesn’t celebrate the good old days or dissect the misery of being young. It also has a fresh take on adults. In the classic coming-of-age story, from The Catcher in the Rye to The Breakfast Club, adults are criticised for being adults — responsible, repressed, always nagging you to grow up. But here, the young keep wishing the grown-ups would grow up. “They act like kids,” is Luke’s constant complaint.

The film has its flaws. One is the idea that Luke is an unpopular high-schooler with no friends. Excuse me, who has ever heard of a drug dealer no teenagers wanted to hang out with? The other flaw is Kingsley’s bold, if not always successful, performance. His is the kind of caring-kook role that usually goes to Robin Williams. Kingsley breaks with the usual stereotype of a New York analyst. With his blue-collar accent and Harvey Keitel vest, he’s more like a character from an early Scorsese than a Woody Allen turn. There’s something inherently comic about seeing Sir Ben let loose in the world of gangstas, but at times he seems too mannered to be true.

The Wackness (the title is slang for bad) ultimately succeeds, though, because of the character of Luke. Here’s a depressed teenager who says “life sucks” yet never comes across as a whiney brat who blames mom and dad for all his problems. This is largely due to the accomplished performance of Josh Peck. He gives us a Luke who is invincible and totally vulnerable; a kid wise to the wicked ways of the street, but innocent to the highway of the human heart. All stoical and sad, Luke is a lost romantic in a world too emotionally numb and doped-up for romance. Unlike Larry Clark’s Kids, that other seminal youth-in-the-1990s film, The Wackness is not a portrait of a generation, it’s a portrait of outsiders and oddballs of every age: funny, poignant and well worth seeing.

15, 99 mins

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