The Wackness Reviews
Critic & User Reviews
Critic Reviews
A tightly packed entertainment. It explodes through familiar teen-transition territory with dark ironies, but, all the while, touches are sentiments.
Read the full reviewBoth darkly funny and life-affirming, in an offbeat and offhanded way.
Read the full reviewWhat saves this movie, which won this year's audience award at Sundance, from being boring are performances by two actors who see a chance to go over the top and aren't worried about the fall on the other side.
Read the full reviewNot everything in The Wackness works and there are times when the divergent serious/comedic tones clash instead of complementing each other. However, in spite of its flaws, the production gets us to care about the characters and their situations.
Read the full reviewThe dopest thing about The Wackness is Thirlby, who, after supporting turns in "Juno" and "Snow Angels," is quickly becoming reason enough to see any film she's in.
Read the full reviewThe Amerindie annals are over-full of withdrawn male loners hoping to quirk or cathart themselves out of teenage purgatory. But like "Donnie Darko," "Thumbsucker" and a few others, The Wackness treads this familiar terrain with assurance and distinction.
Read the full reviewThe best thing about it is Peck, who shows you the sweet, virginal kid hiding inside the outlaw poseur.
Read the full reviewAn almost-there comedy with diverting compensations.
Read the full reviewDisappointingly, the movie runs along the track of many earlier coming-of-age dramas, with appointed station stops at Cynicism, Puppy Love, Puppy Sex, Puppy Heartbreak, and Greater Wisdom.
Read the full reviewThe movie he (Josh Peck) is in, The Wackness, written and directed by Jonathan Levine, makes a good-faith effort to steer clear of such clichés, and succeeds and fails in roughly equal measure.
Read the full reviewThe Wackness may not have much that's new to say about being 17--it's a fairly standard coming-of-age drama with a couple of noteworthy performances--but it's a definitive compendium of trivia about 1994 (by Levine's lights, the best year ever).
Read the full reviewWhen it's good, it's good, and when it fails, it's still clear what Levine was trying to do.
Read the full reviewThe Wackness' main draw is 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.
Read the full reviewEmulating its hero's recklessly independent spirit, The Wackness aspires to be something more than your average psychiatrist-bashing, dysfunctional-parents coming-of-age dramedy à la "Running With Scissors." It snows us with more visual flash than it knows what to do with.
Read the full reviewReview excerpts provided by Metacritic.com.
The Metascore® designation for this movie is 61
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