July 22, 2008
The Wackness, a Hip-Hop Flashback
Released early this month, “The Wackness” is a movie portraying some of the live in the middle 1990s with hip-hop culture as an underlying motivator. This film is starred by Ben Kingsley, Josh Peck, Famke Janssen, Mary-Kate Olsen,and Olivia Thirlby, the film is distributed by Sony Pictures Classics in the USA, and will be released in the UK next August 29, 2008.
Produced by Joe Neurauter, Keith Calder, and Felipe Marino with a $20 million budget and directed by Jonathan Levine, the story takes us back to New York in 1994 and, despite its drug use-related plot, some critics have compared this film with those comedies of Cheech and Chong because of the jokes the characters play with.
Even though, “The Wackness” is Levine’s free adaptation of the spy novel “The Echelon Vendetta” by David Stone published past year, in which all the CIA agents who participated in a top secret, but illegal operation called Echelon are killed.
Incidentally, Jonathan Levine graduated in 1994 and some people point at his own experience watching how marijuana was dealt among senior high school classmates. Beyond gossip and speculations, “The Wackness” include sexuality and partial nudity scenes.
Some people have questioned Levine about Sir Ben Kingsley, an Academy Award winner actor, playing a role in “The Wackness” and he could not resist express that “As much as I adore and worship Ben Kingsley , having Method Man on the set was an absolute thrill. That was so cool.”
Beyond opinions, do you think “The Wackness” is really a flashback to the hip-hop scene of the 1990s?