The Wackness

I won't lie in this next sentence. I loved Josh and Drake, even after Josh got skinny. I mean, it was still a great show just Josh's self depreciating humor didn't quite make so much sense (or did it because possibly he was still wrestling with his inaccurate self-percieved body image due to his rapid weight loss?). Seriously, it was still funny. What's not funny is that Carly got her own fucking stupid show and it's fucking stupid. That's not what this is about though, this is about The Wackness and how the reason I chose to watch it is because it stars the infamous Josh Peck. A measure of how stoked I was about this movie? Instead of leaving it festering at the bottom of my Netflix Queue I bumped it up to just below the last 4 discs of Battlestar.

First off, this movie is set in the summer of 1994 and it is the most 90s-tastic movie that wasn't made in the 90's that I have ever seen. I almost got nostalgic. Part of this setting was the soundtrack, which was awesome because it mainly featured some of the best rap to come out of the late 80's and early 90's. They throw a few other tracks in there as well, but overall it was probably one of the most aptly put together soundtracks I've heard in a while. This is mainly due to the fact that music made sense in time with the movie.

Anyways, the film follows Josh Peck as 18 yr old Luke Shapiro who has just graduated high school and is trying to earn as much money as he can in his summer before college by selling more weed. What was interesting is that the drug aspect of this film ends up taking a back seat and really only seems to serve as a vessel to string all the elements of the plot together, and to tug them along through the stream so they don't get caught in some twigs and stagnate. Beyond this the film revolves around Luke's relationship with his (kind of) shrink Dr. Spires and their relationship with eachother as well as the women in their lives.

The Wackness takes on a lot of big thoughts in this film and succeeds completely. I was totally satisfied at the end. Part of me wishes I had watched this when I was 17 or 18, but the other part of me knows that I would have rejected most of it outright because it has a backdrop of drug culture. The rest of the movie really overshadows this though (like I said before) and it's the challenges Luke and Spires face that are what really make this movie appealing. Besides all this though, the movie was excellently shot with quite a few Charlie Kaufman-esque cuts and dreams sequences that are excellently interwoven to keep from the veiwer from feeling complacent.

This is a movie I would recommend that most people under the age of 35 watch, but I make no promises that it will be fully enjoyed.

The Wackness gets 7 Beards And A Moustache.

Josh and Drake gets 6 Beards pending a full review.