Up in smoke

ARE you the dopeness, or The Wackness? That's the dilemma facing 18-year-old Luke Shapiro (Josh Peck), as articulated by the object of his affection Stephanie (Olivia Thirlby), in writer-director Jonathan Levine's ode to Manhattan, circa summertime 1994. Staying just ahead of the ever-tightening retro-culture cycle, Levine looks back to the time when hip-hop was just about to begin dominating popular music, the shock of Kurt Cobain's suicide had worn off and Whitewater would wash away the potential promised by the 1992 election.

An age of optimism, or naivete, was passing, but there was really great weed on the market. As the summer begins, Luke spends his days selling smoke from an ice cream cart to trustafarian peers who value him more for the potency of his pot than his friendship. His parents are one paycheck away from losing their apartment and having to face the ultimate Manhattan nightmare: moving to New Jersey. College plans are not set in stone, and he has a crush on the stepdaughter of therapist Dr. Squires (Ben Kingsley), who trades counseling for Luke's cannabis.

Dr. Squires could use some counseling, too, as his marriage to Stephanie's mother (Famke Janssen) is disintegrating and his drug intake is not restricted to Luke's wares. But the two find common ground and begin hanging out to the point that Dr. Squires begins accompanying Luke on his dope-dealing rounds, getting wasted and, at one point, making out with Luke's hippie-waif client Union (Mary-Kate Olsen). Luke, meanwhile, makes a little progress with Stephanie, but his lack of social skills and pent-up need for affection clashes with her aloofness until she hits him with the aforementioned question while the two frolic at her folks' beach house.

The Wackness was a featured film at CineVegas and has been making the rounds on the festival circuit, garnering both audience awards and mixed reviews. The source of its weaknesses lies in its conception. This is the New York of Levine's high school graduating class, and it feels like he wanted to get to the '90s nostalgia finish line first. He doesn't seem to be overreaching in trying to nail down 1994, but sometimes the cultural references in the screenplay seem somewhat contrived -- a recurring joke about then-newly elected Mayor Rudy Giuliani gets stale quickly. And it's a mystery why Luke doesn't have a single friend even though he seems to have been born and raised in the same neighborhood.

The chemistry between Kingsley, Peck and Thirlby makes it work. Kingsley's impish performance supplies much of the comedic coal needed to fuel the film, and Luke would seem even more adrift if any other character played the role of Dr. Squires. Levine and cinematographer Petra Corner played around with the look of the film to match the shifting mood as well, but I'd stop short of calling Levine's award-winning film pretentious, as some critics have. He just made a small coming-of-age film about the time he came of age, and he did it with just enough dopeness.