''The Wackness'

Rating:

BY RAFER GUZMÁN | rafer.guzman@newsday.com

July 4, 2008

PLOT Two stoners - one young, one old - form an unlikely friendship.

CAST Ben Kingsley, Josh Peck, Olivia Thirlby, Mary-Kate Olsen

LENGTH 101 minutes

PLAYING AT Angelika Film Center, Lincoln Plaza Cinemas and AMC Empire 25, Manhattan. Opening July 25 at Cinema Arts Centre, Huntington.

BOTTOM LINE A heartfelt script and fine performances make this quirky coming-of-age movie an unexpected treat.

Jonathan Levine, the writer-director of "The Wackness," asks a lot of his viewers. We have to believe that a teenage pot dealer and hip-hop head like Luke Shapiro (Josh Peck) would also be a shy virgin. And that Shapiro would be seeing a bong-toking therapist (Ben Kingsley) who charges by the gram rather than the hour. And that these two oddballs would become not only partners in crime but a surrogate father and son.

These are tall hurdles, but Levine's elegant solution is to simply step around them and move on. Improbably, "The Wackness" becomes a smart, funny and genuinely touching story of two lost souls trying to find themselves.

The setting is Manhattan, the year 1994 (the same year Levine, 32, graduated high school). Mayor Rudolph Giuliani had yet to sanitize the city, and hip-hop, the sound of the streets, was at its artistic peak. (The film's soundtrack is out on Jive Records; a novelization of the script is due July 8.) It's summer, and Shapiro is peddling pot from an Italian ice cart and seeing Dr. Squires, who dispenses tough love and rough-hewn wisdom. Shapiro also has eyes for Squires' sexy, streetwise stepdaughter, Stephanie (Olivia Thirlby, the snarky friend in "Juno").

"The Wackness" is less a story than a series of moments - some funny, some poignant, all memorable, thanks to Levine's fine writing and a terrific cast. Peck's Shapiro is inarticulate but sensitive, like Holden Caulfield in a backward ball-cap. Thirlby, as a jaded fun-seeker with a sweet side, strikes her notes perfectly. And Kingsley digs into Squires - a mess of tics and muddled motivations - with gusto. It's certainly a kick watching Sir Ben tangle with Mary-Kate Olsen (as a spaced-out hippie chick) and recite rhymes by The Notorious B.I.G.

"The Wackness" wobbles when it focuses on Squires and his grown-up problems. Its teenage heart beats strongest when Shapiro and Stephanie share the screen. And the movie's slangy title is actually rather profound: It's the opposite of "dopeness," of course.