'Wackness' undresses to impress

Everyone in "The Wackness" tries so very, very hard to be risqué that there isn't a moment in which the movie isn't posturing.

Centered on a recent high-school graduate selling marijuana in 1994 New York City, "The Wackness" is an embarrassment for everyone involved. The only point worth debating is who should be the most embarrassed.

Perhaps Josh Peck, desperately trying to shed his kiddie image from Nickelodeon's "Drake & Josh." As Luke Shapiro, the teen dealer, Peck lowers his eyelids to half mast and speaks in the lingo of the era: "I'm mad depressed, yo."

To combat that depression, Luke meets with a psychiatrist played by Ben Kingsley. Luke trades drugs for couch time, which means there are plenty of "shocking" scenes in which Kingsley takes to a bong. (At least these are more tolerable than those of Kingsley and Famke Janssen, as the psychiatrist's wife, having graphic sex.)

Speaking of sex, there are also explicit scenes involving Peck and Olivia Thirlby, a young talent who showed promise in both "Juno" and "Snow Angels." Here, as the psychiatrist's step-daughter and Luke's love interest, she's asked to play jail bait.

Writer-director Jonathan Levine is doing the asking, so perhaps he should be the most embarrassed of all. I don't know how much of "The Wackness" is autobiographical - Levine did grow up in Manhattan in the 1990s - but the movie reeks of nostalgic self-glorification.

Someone should assure Levine that he is very, very cool so that we can all move on.

"The Wackness" opens July 3 in New York City and Los Angeles. Look for it in Chicago-area theaters on July 11.