| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 18, 2011

If nothing else, it's probably worth seeing for the kissing scene between Kingsley and Mary-Kate Olsen.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Nov 19, 2008

It muddles through on its period infatuation and on Kingsley's dope-loving turn as a doctor constantly on the verge of another hit.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 14, 2008

The Wackness, while no masterpiece, is the kind of film that doesn't come to much but is watchable as it saunters along with a provoking sense of meaningful pessimism. The performances are really the thing - Levine hasn't managed anything better.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 29, 2008

The direction is unlikeably murky and unfocused but this is more dope than wack - and a guaranteed four-star movie if you're already stoned yourself.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 29, 2008

The film's forlorn charm is a little reminiscent of Cameron Crowe's adolescent memoir Almost Famous. It's a tiny bit soppy, too, but you can forgive that in a teenager.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 29, 2008

Levine's film is often showy, clumsy, over-earnest. But then so are its characters. So is late adolescence. The Wackness carries out the advice Squires gives to Luke - make a mess, embrace pain. In doing so, it ends up anything but wack.

| Aug 29, 2008

Its writer-director, Jonathan Levine, lavishes the movie with inky black shadows and soft gauzy close-ups, making it mostly feel like a dream, or a half-conjured memory.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 29, 2008

Kingsley's shamelessly zingy performance adds welcome pep, and a delicate, achingly sincere summertime idyll on Fire Island offers notice of Levine's evident promise.

| Original Score: 4/6 | Aug 29, 2008

An unlikely buddy comedy that comes to life whenever Kingsley appears - he doesn't so much steal the show as roll it into a fat blunt and smoke it.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 29, 2008

On the downside: There is a wackness to The Wackness, a saggy psychic undertow that drags down its lighter and smarter aspects.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jul 25, 2008

The Wackness, for all its eccentricities and emotional pain, is really a sweet little film.

| Original Score: B | Jul 25, 2008

It's standard, straight-outta-Sundance indie fare, but it's also a crowd-pleasing portrait of boys-who-will-be-men-who-will-be-boys.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 25, 2008

The characters are sympathetically drawn and the modest wisdom rings true.

| Jul 24, 2008

Most of the time, Peck is cast adrift in an uncertain world, and Levine too often conflates his lack of purpose with the movie's.

Full Review | Original Score: C | Jul 18, 2008

Levine, who wrote the film as well as directed it, re-creates 1994 with the painstaking detail usually reserved for period pieces and costume dramas.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 17, 2008

A minor triumph.

Full Review | Jul 14, 2008

Its story is a familiar one, whatever the decade.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Jul 11, 2008

When The Wackness is good, it's good, and when it fails, it's still clear what Levine was trying to do. Someday he'll probably be able to do it.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 11, 2008

For all of Kingsley's hamming, he can't overshadow Peck's mournful performance. Nor can you forget the film's reminder that the cruellest thing you can say to a teenager is that these are the best years of his life.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jul 11, 2008