The Wackness.

"The Wackness is a mix tape of clichés, with writer-director Jonathan Levine taking cuts from a dozen or more 'life-affirming' coming-of-age melodramas and setting them to the backbeat of NYC 94," writes Nick Pinkerton in the Voice.

Michael Joshua Rowin in the L Magazine: "This is the same old Sundance-approved 'quirky' dramedy that's been sadly dominating American independent filmmaking for the past decade, only here ensconced in I Love the 90s nostalgia that can't even get the early Giuliani era halfway right in look or atmosphere."

Updated through 7/3.

For the New York Times, Charles McGrath profiles Levine, who "looks less like a movie director than the eager-to-please guy who fetches the director's coffee. He grew up on the Upper East Side and went to St Bernard's, Trinity and then Andover - a part of his résumé that he prefers not to dwell on. 'It really hurts my street cred,' he said."

Online listening tip. Matt Singer and Alison Willmore (IFC) talk drug movies.

Earlier: Craig Phillips and reviews from Sundance.

Updates, 7/3: "To attempt a story like this - about a young man's sexual initiation, heartbreak and disillusionment with the adult world that he is about to enter - is to sacrifice a degree of novelty," writes AO Scott in the New York Times. "Mr Levine tries to compensate with a combination of historical authenticity and low-key emotional sincerity." Overall, he "succeeds and fails in roughly equal measure."

For S James Snyder, writing in the New York Sun, "The Wackness is a peculiar and beguiling surprise, the cinematic version of one of those endless summer afternoons that line the median between adolescence and adulthood. It's also a work of expertly calibrated performances."

"[W]hatever writing or directing mistakes were committed by young filmmaker Jonathan Levine (All the Boys Love Mandy Lane) are more than made up for by his first-rate casting and the exceptional performances he has elicited from his actors," agrees Alonso Duralde at MSNBC.

"The Wackness' main draw is [Ben] Kingsley's giddily over-the-top performance as a pothead, and the film delights in showing Gandhi sparking a huge bong or making out with Mary-Kate Olsen in a phone booth," writes Scott Tobias at the AV Club. "Yet it's paced much more to [Josh] Peck's brooding wavelength, and like a lot of movies with passive protagonists, it inevitably goes slack."

Slate's Dana Stevens agrees: Kingsley's "unny, layered performance as the needy but endearing Jeff is the single best thing in The Wackness," whereas "naive, mouth-breathing Luke, who dominates virtually every scene, is the movie's most thinly drawn and least interesting character."

"Levine's emphasis on specificity - he goes to the trouble to rig up a bus that passes Luke with a Forrest Gump ad - nearly undoes his story's inherent universality," argues Matt Singer (IFC). "Luke's problems could manifest in any time period, and the best parts about The Wackness are the ones that could have been set a hundred years ago, or a hundred years from now."

"From the desaturated hues of its early and middle passages to the alabaster pallor of almost its entire cast, this movie is lily white, regardless of how many Nas, Biggie and Wu-Tang Clan songs can get stuffed into the final mix," notes Brandon Harris.

Armond White in the New York Press: "Midway through 2008, something surprising has happened: Two films with human dimension and artful expression - Adam Yauch's Gunnin' For That #1 Spot and Jonathan Levine's The Wackness - have flushed the toilet of summer movies. Neither is a special effects extravaganza, but they stir emotion by emphasizing the human scale of what movies can show. (See my mid-year round-up below.)"

"It's as if there's a great film waiting to be made about these people in that place and time, and The Wackness gets about, oh, 68 percent of the way there." Salon's Andrew O'Hehir introduces his interview with Levine.

Stephen Saito (IFC) talks with Levine and Peck.

Michael Ordoña meets Olivia Thirlby for the Los Angeles Times.

Posted by dwhudson at July 2, 2008 8:28 AM