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WHACKING THE WACKNESS

by
in Filmmaking
on Apr 22, 2008

Over at Ain’t It Cool News, Quint calls the trailer for Jonathan Levine’s The Wackness “an okay trailer for a great movie” and “a little clunky.” At Hollywood Elsewhere, Jeffrey Wells thinks star Josh Peck “is basically Leo Gorcey” and is not likely to ever play “anything other than a what-up homie who sells tabs of ecstasy and dilaudid in Tompkins Square Park” while one of his readers, Hallick, calls the clip “the dullest trailer of 2008” and asks, “What the hell are they trying their hardest not to sell here?”

Yep, the trailer’s underwhelming, but it does set you up with the lowered expectations that I and everyone I knew at Sundance had when we went to see the movie. Expected to hate it, squirmed in our seats for a couple minutes, but eventually thought it was kinda okay despite a few couldn’t-figure-out-how-to-wrap-it-up moments at the end. Peck is decent, Olivia Thirlby’s amazing and despite its slick ’90s-retro veneer, the film has a surprising amount of heart. Let’s just hope the next trailer is better.

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