Frem Here To Awesome Festival
Advertisement

movies
mavens
communities

The Wackness (2008)

The Wackness
Want to see it?
Seen it?
  • 0
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • Rate this movie.

Want to buy it?
Write a review
addDiscuss it
Add to lists
addRecommend it
get recommendationsGet recommendations
trailerWatch trailer

Rent it, watch it, find it

Advertisement

Directed by Jonathan Levine.
A psychiatrist (Ben Kingsley) is put into a moral quandary when a young drug dealer that's been supplying him with pot in exchange for clinical treatment ends up dating his daughter in this comedy from All the Boys Love Mandy Lane's writer/director Jonathan Levine. Josh Peck, Famke Janssen, Mary-Kate Olsen and Method Man co-star in the Occupant Films production. ~ Jeremy Wheeler, All Movie Guide
[more]

Reviews and discussions

Write a review

SpoutBlogSpoutBlog Iron Man to Battle the MPAA Ove ...
by SpoutBlog in SpoutBlog on spout.com
hasn't rated it.
Was this review helpful? [Be the first to tell us!]
 "Paramount may soon be under investigation by the MPAA for allegedly marketing inappropriate content to children. Specific TV ads for Iron Man and Drillbit Taylor have been highlighted by the Better Business Bureau as being targeted to kids aged 12 and under. Apparently this isn’t kosher since both movies are rated PG-13. Of course, anyone who has been to or worked at a movie theater knows, there’s no stopping kids under the age of 13 from buying tickets to such movies. But that doesn’t mean it’s suitable for PG-13-rated fare to be directly marketed to the younger audience. Both movies have been advertised during Nickelodeon shows Zoey 101 and Drake & Josh, which are primarily viewed by preteens and other youths. Stephanie Sanchez at IESB.net, reporting on this story, adds that the MPAA should also address Paramount’s marketing of Strange Wilderness, which she saw advertised during Spongebob Squarepants and Drake & Josh while watching the programs with her kids, aged 4 and 6. Consid ... " [More]
dunedonkeydunedonkey The first great 90s period piec ...
by dunedonkey in film phlegm
liked it.
Was this review helpful? [Be the first to tell us!]
 "I had the opportunity to see The Wackness tonight at the SF International Film Festival. It was great. That may sound trite, but in this case, “great” constitutes “big” and “bold” in same way that an adventure or a road trip is “great”. The Wackness is the first great road trip into what I like to call The Identity-Crysis Decade (that hasn’t been coined yet, has it?), where American teens struggle to identify with anything . Generation Why was a generation thrown out to fend for itself while their Baby Boomer parents struggled to cope with their own mid-life crises. Josh Peck plays a 17 year old kid, a drug dealer, who finishes high school, and missed being a teenager. Never had many friends, never had a girlfriend, never had sex. He wasn’t your typical shallow kid, but a profoundly intimate kid, with legitimate dreams and aspirations. When he and his parents are facing eviction, he's forced to be both the kid trying to gr ... " [More]
KarinaKarina Tribeca Review: The Wackness
by Karina in Karina on SpoutBlog
hasn't rated it.
Was this review helpful? [Be the first to tell us!]
 "I saw The Wackness (which has its New York premiere tomorrow at the Tribeca Film Festival) at a special screening held for the critics participating in the Moving Image Institute last week. Afterwards, Sony Classics president Michael Barker was asked about critical response to the film thus far. Barker disclaimed that “most major critics” hadn’t yet reviewed the film, but then said something surprisingly candid about the makeup of the film’s detractors. “What’s the demographic of the critics who don’t like it?” he began, starting a statement with a question in expert post-Robert Evans mogul style. “Female. Single. Mothers with teenage kids––they don’t like the movie.” Who ever’s doing research over at Sony deserves a raise. I fit just two of those descriptors, and I don’t like it, either. Maybe it’s true that even professional critics struggle to get beyond their own natural demographic biases. A certain (very young, very male) segment of the film blogosphere lashed out at Sony for ... " [More]
SpoutBlogSpoutBlog Tribeca Review: The Wackness
by SpoutBlog in SpoutBlog on spout.com
hasn't rated it.
Was this review helpful? [Be the first to tell us!]
 "I saw The Wackness (which has its New York premiere tomorrow at the Tribeca Film Festival) at a special screening held for the critics participating in the Moving Image Institute last week. Afterwards, Sony Classics president Michael Barker was asked about critical response to the film thus far. Barker disclaimed that “most major critics” hadn’t yet reviewed the film, but then said something surprisingly candid about the makeup of the film’s detractors. “What’s the demographic of the critics who don’t like it?” he began, starting a statement with a question in expert post-Robert Evans mogul style. “Female. Single. Mothers with teenage kids––they don’t like the movie.” Who ever’s doing research over at Sony deserves a raise. I fit just two of those descriptors, and I don’t like it, either. Maybe it’s true that even professional critics struggle to get beyond their own natural demographic biases. A certain (very young, very male) segment of the film blogosphere lashed out at Sony for ... " [More]
KarinaKarina Penelope Cruz Joins in Bizarre ...
by Karina in Karina on SpoutBlog
hasn't rated it.
Was this review helpful? [Be the first to tell us!]
 "Egotastic has a couple of artfully lit but not particularly safe for work clips from Elegy, which feature a naked Penelope Cruz in bed with Ben Kingsley. I don’t know much about this film––it premiered at Berlinale, where Jurgen Fauth described how Cruz’s “breasts even become a plot point”––but surely, this is the most pre-release attention ever given to anything directed by Isabel Coixet, and that’s probably ultimately a good thing. Still, it points to an alarming trend of indie/art films which position the 65 year-old Kingsley as a sex symbol to much, much younger women. If it takes three examples to make a trend, we can easily find the other two in Kingsley’s next film to hit the American marketplace, Sundance crowd pleaser The Wackness. The 31-year age difference between Kingsley and Cruz makes their coupling only slightly less convincing than the actor’s love-at-first-sight meet-cute with a character played by Jane Adams in The Wackness. Adams is 43, but in Jonathan Levine’s ... " [More]
SpoutBlogSpoutBlog Penelope Cruz Joins in Bizarre ...
by SpoutBlog in SpoutBlog on spout.com
hasn't rated it.
Was this review helpful? [Be the first to tell us!]
 "Egotastic has a couple of artfully lit but not particularly safe for work clips from Elegy, which feature a naked Penelope Cruz in bed with Ben Kingsley. I don’t know much about this film––it premiered at Berlinale, where Jurgen Fauth described how Cruz’s “breasts even become a plot point”––but surely, this is the most pre-release attention ever given to anything directed by Isabel Coixet, and that’s probably ultimately a good thing. Still, it points to an alarming trend of indie/art films which position the 65 year-old Kingsley as a sex symbol to much, much younger women. If it takes three examples to make a trend, we can easily find the other two in Kingsley’s next film to hit the American marketplace, Sundance crowd pleaser The Wackness. The 31-year age difference between Kingsley and Cruz makes their coupling only slightly less convincing than the actor’s love-at-first-sight meet-cute with a character played by Jane Adams in The Wackness. Adams is 43, but in Jonathan Levine’s ... " [More]
SpoutBlogSpoutBlog FULL HOUSE Avant-Garde. Clip of ...
by SpoutBlog in SpoutBlog on spout.com
hasn't rated it.
Was this review helpful? [Be the first to tell us!]
 "The Onion’s A.V. Club says this deserves to “float around the ‘ol blogosphere,” and I agree. Because if we can get enough people to support experimental films based on scenes from TV’s Full House, then one day I’ll be able to watch Candace Cameron and Dave Coullier on a big screen at Anthology Film Archives — oh wait, that’s already happening this very week with Michael Robinson’s Light is Waiting (GreenCine has a review from its NYFF screening). Well, then, I await an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art next. Really, that’s where our high art should be going: backwards, and glancing at the low art of the past. I mean, this is the year in which we see Ben Kingsley make out with Mary-Kate Olsen (in The Wackness), so it’s obviously a time for mixing cultures by blurring the lines between high and low cultural artifacts. Just to give you what little background on this video is known (or needs to be known): it took artist Paul Slocum three years to make, and all of those actors reen ... " [More]
KarinaKarina The Wackness and Biz Markie. Cl ...
by Karina in Karina on SpoutBlog
hasn't rated it.
Was this review helpful? [Be the first to tell us!]
 "Even those who were less than enthused by Jonathan Levine’s The Wackness when the film debuted at Sundance had good things to say about the film’s soundtrack, which uses early-to-mid-90s hip hop to set the mood of New York City circa 1994. The Playlist’s post on music used in the film gives me the justification to do something I’ve wanted to do for my entire professional film blogging career: post the video for Biz Markie’s “Just a Friend.” Sure, The Wackness might have Mary-Kate Olsen and Ben Kingsley making out in a phone booth, the story of Biz and a girl named BlahBlahBlah is a true romantic epic. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog » karina " [More]
SpoutBlogSpoutBlog The Wackness and Biz Markie. Cl ...
by SpoutBlog in SpoutBlog on spout.com
hasn't rated it.
Was this review helpful? [Be the first to tell us!]
 "Even those who were less than enthused by Jonathan Levine’s The Wackness when the film debuted at Sundance had good things to say about the film’s soundtrack, which uses early-to-mid-90s hip hop to set the mood of New York City circa 1994. The Playlist’s post on music used in the film gives me the justification to do something I’ve wanted to do for my entire professional film blogging career: post the video for Biz Markie’s “Just a Friend.” Sure, The Wackness might have Mary-Kate Olsen and Ben Kingsley making out in a phone booth, the story of Biz and a girl named BlahBlahBlah is a true romantic epic. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog " [More]
KarinaKarina Tribeca’s Embarrasment of Riche ...
by Karina in Karina on SpoutBlog
hasn't rated it.
Was this review helpful? [Be the first to tell us!]
 "The Tribeca Film Festival continues its mission to wow us with quantity over discovery by booking a full sidebar of festival leftovers like Savage Grace (which will have been on the festival circuit for about 50 weeks by the time it hits lower Manhattan courtesy of Robert DeNiro and American Express) and The Wackness (which will make its multiplex debut via Sony Classics a month or two after its Tribeca screening). But, as always, the festival’s Restored and Rediscovered program offers hope, including screenings of new prints of Fellini’s Toby Dammit, and Curtis Harrington’s Cat People–inspired, young-Dennis Hopper-starring Night Tide. While we’re on the topic of festival exports: Nanette Burstein’s American Teen will open the 2008 edition of Sundance at BAM on May 29. Would it even be news that a new Patrick Swayze movie is having its world premiere in Austria, if Swayze’s battle with cancer wasn’t currently grade-A tabloid grist, and if his health didn’t preclude his attendance? ... " [More]
[More reviews]
Tags: tribeca , tribeca-2008 , tribeca-film-festival , tribeca-film-fest , tff
View all
 


Spout's Scavenger Hunt

Community ratings

mavens
Spout mavens
haven't rated it
most people
Most people
liked it.

Other opinions

dunedonkey
dunedonkey
liked it.