I blew twelve dollars the other night, and I didn't even get buzzed. My friend dragged me to see The Wackness, which she promised would be "dope", as the headlines across NYC subways proclaimed in squiggley grafitti writing: NYC 1994. The music was dope. The girls were fly. And Luke was just trying to deal.
I went with her, completely trusting her judjement (next time I'll read a review or two), and knowing nothing more than the subway billboards: Mary Kate Olsen makes an appearance, and Ben Kinglsey has long hair. I can only ever imagine him as Gandhi, so I decided to give it a try. Also, I liked the 90's.
    First of all, do not confuse this to be a movie about young people and hip hop. The story is about an upper-middle class Jewish kid named Luke who deals pot and smokes a lot and really wants to get laid who attends one of the storied prep schools on the Upper part of Manhattan. He meets a psychiatrist, played by Ben Kinglsey, who performs one of the worst New York accents to date. The movie, The Wackess, is essentially about their relationship outside of their seemingly splitting lives—both of their foundations are falling a part. Also, the doctor smokes a lot of dope. Actually, everyone in the movie smokes a lot of dope, and I left the theater with three intense feelings: I wanna  kick a hipster; I wanna blast The Fugees (why did Jesus take them away??); I wanna smoke a fatty.
    The audience was full of teenage and twenty-ish-old self-proclaimed American Apparelled hipsters—who were catching the flick at the Angelika Theater because they are Really Fucking Indie and Ahead Of The Times  and Oh So Fucking Unique In Their White Tee and Skinny Jeans and Dumb Ironic Retro Glasses (take that shit off, damn) even though They Are Totally Unoriginal Because Everyone Dresses Like That and sit around with their identital hair cuts and pretentious ponderings to come up with theories that describe how fly Lil' Wayne's new shit really is and Wu Tang's actually whack and Some Obscure Band is fly from their crowded trust-funded brownstones.  Not that I have a problem with hipsters or anything. This theater was packed with them.
    At every 90's hip hop reference, there was a hoot from some prep kid who barely lived in the 90's, which was entertaining enough.  Every other scene had a anti-Giuliani comment, which also got a lot of cheers. People clapped at the end of the movie, and I ran out as soon as possible. If you see The Wackness, be warned, it's nothing like the commercials, but it's not that bad. The soundtrack is pretty good, though, featuring well-known throwbacks like B.I.G. and DJ Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince, Wu-Tang and a Tribe Called Quest. It's like they took the Top 40 Hip Hop tracks from 1994 and put it in the movie. The best song on the soundtrack is a remix of Can I Kick It? by A Tribe Called Quest, featuring a sample from Lou Reed's Heroin. It made me less angry about the wasted cash. I left the theater to kick off the wackness and, well, kick it.  Look out for some better reviews in the coming days.....