The Tripod

Media Credit: www.cinemaisdope.com [Click to enlarge]

Media Credit: www.cinemaisdope.com [Click to enlarge]

Media Credit: www.cinemaisdope.com [Click to enlarge]

Summer hit The Wackness delivers a coming-of-age story that follows high-school misfit, Luke Shapiro as he loses his virginity, falls in love, falls apart, and grows up over the summer after his graduation. Sounds like a million other movies you've seen? It's not. An amazing cast including Oscar-winner Sir Ben Kingsley and an early '90s setting make this movie stand out against other mediocre summer premieres.

It's set in New York City in 1994, when the city was pulsing with the hip-hop sounds of the Notorious B.I.G., Tupac, and Nas, among others (the soundtrack alone makes it worth the trip to the movies) and is colored with great '90s references that anyone who lived through the decade will enjoy. Giuliani has just become the mayor and begun his "clean up" of New York, and throughout the movie, characters bemoan his stringent laws, warning, "Don't let Giuliani see you."

Director/writer Jonathan Levine said the movie developed from a scene he wrote in film school in which a drug dealer exchanges drugs for therapy. This scene functions as the opening scene and the whole movie blossoms from that first encounter. Best known for his role as Josh on the Nickelodeon show "Drake and Josh," Josh Peck took the lead role as drug-dealing high school graduate Luke. "He's going through a time that I'm just at the tail end of. It's very difficult at 18 years old to figure out what constitutes a man. For all intents and purposes you are a man. You can vote and go to war, but it's experience, it's relationships. You're trying on everything. Luke describes it best: "We were the most popular of the unpopular," Peck said.

Although Peck delivers a great performance, especially for a child actor taking on such a grown-up role, it was his costar Kingsley who stole the limelight. Kingsley plays Luke's psychiatrist-turned-friend Dr. Squires, a product of the Hippie generation, who undergoes a coming-of-age process that parallels Luke's. Squires must essentially 'grow up,' and accept his responsibilities as an adult.

"It is a great comedy, but it also has a heart and at the heart of it is this perfect symmetry of 'once upon a time there was a boy who had no parents and once upon a time there was a father who had no children.' I love the way if you start your story like that, then the universe in the story find a way of bringing these people together, however momentarily, and they fulfill each other's needs perfectly," Kingsley said in an interview.

And he gets to make-out with Mary Kate Olsen.

If you have been enjoying Method Man's drug-dealing character on the final few seasons of "The Wire," then you'll love his cameos in The Wackness. He gives a convincing performance as Luke's Jamaican drug supplier named Percy. Although he hails from Staten Island, Method Man crafts a Jamaican accent so expertly that you might think he comes straight from the streets of Trenchtown.

Olivia Thirlby, who played Juno's best friend in Juno, also gives a noteable portrayal of Stephanie, Luke's love interest and Squires' step-daughter. Although she (spoiler alert!) ultimately breaks Luke's heart, Thirlby generates a loveable character to which her audience can relate.

The Wackness has already won the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival, and no doubt "mad" more wins will follow.

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