Director Jonathan Levine was a young man in the New York of 1994 when Rudy Giuliani was starting to clean up the city, people used pagers instead of cellphones, and Tupac and Biggie were still alive, helping to make it the greatest year in hip-hop history.

It’s unlikely, however, that he was anything like Luke (Josh Peck), his protagonist, a semi-suicidal young slacker who sells dope, can’t get laid and goes to Dr Squires, a long-haired psychiatrist played by Ben Kingsley, for comfort. “Don’t go for the quick fix,” says the doc. “This whole city wants a quick fix.” This doesn’t sound like the shrink who then cheerfully accepts payment in dope while ruefully eyeing his rehab-addicted wife (Famke Janssen) whom he can barely tolerate.

Meanwhile, Luke eyes up Dr Squires’s stepdaughter, Stephanie (Olivia Thirlby), which doesn’t please him at all, since he regards Luke as a dead-end case and is rather fond of the girl. But both patient and doctor want to get laid, and it looks as if the doctor might be first to succeed, even if it is with his own wife while surreptitiously watching a porno film.

This may seem rather a seedy affair, but Levine’s summing-up of a certain time and place, and the funny-sad performances of Peck and Kingsley — who seems to be in every other film just now but varies his performances with considerable brio — give it a flavour you can’t deny.

Hopeless cases are more fun to watch than true heroes and both characters are far gone in their respective ways. If there’s happiness over the rainbow, it is going to take a long time coming.
The Wackness, while no masterpiece, is the kind of film that doesn’t come to much but is watchable as it saunters along with a provoking sense of meaningful pessimism. The performances are really the thing — Levine hasn’t managed anything better.