<table> </table> Whatever you may think of &#8220;The Wackness,&#8221; this much must be acknowledged: It&#8217;s the only movie in which you&#8217;ll see Oscar-winner Ben Kingsley French kissing Mary-Kate Olsen.</p><p>That factoid is also a good indicator of just how &#8220;out there&#8221; Jonathan Levine&#8217;s movie can get. Be forewarned.</p><p>Luke Shapiro (Josh Peck) supplies classmates and a growing list of well-to-do adults on New York&#8217;s Upper East Side with primo marijuana. Everybody knows his name, but nobody really knows Luke, who for all the notoriety of his trade remains a dweeb &#8212; a shy, socially inept virgin always on the outside looking in.</p><p>As an acquaintance observes, it&#8217;s hard to tell if Luke is the most popular kid in the unpopular crowd or the most unpopular of the populars.</p><p>Hey, just because you peddle the best weed in Manhattan doesn&#8217;t make you immune to adolescent angst.</p><p>&#8220;The Wackness&#8221; (you know, &#8217;90s slang for really lame) is the story of Luke&#8217;s first love in the summer of &#8217;94, told with an almost too-aggressive hipness that eventually gives way to genuine feelings. You&#8217;ll appreciate the film only if you can hold out until it stops aiming for cleverness and starts hitting deeper emotional chords.</p><p>One of Luke&#8217;s regular customers is Dr. Squires (Kingsley), a psychiatrist who trades the young man therapy for pot. With scraggly hair and unkempt goatee, a marriage heading for the rocks and a desperate need to relive his own youth, Kingsley&#8217;s Squires is a pumped-up cartoon of a character &#8212; and the film&#8217;s comic high point.</p><p>Squires can go from very sane, rational comments about the hassles of growing up &#8212; he may actually be a pretty good therapist &#8212; to acting like a 14-year-old.</p><p>Squires has a stepdaughter, Stephanie (&#8220;Juno&#8217;s&#8221; Olivia Thirlby), whom Luke has long adored from afar. She&#8217;s rich and popular and about a decade ahead of him sexually. All Luke has is his pot business, but that&#8217;s enough reason for Stephanie to devote a chunk of their post-high school summer to accompanying Luke on his rounds. He&#8217;s like a puppy dog getting his stomach rubbed.</p><p>Meanwhile Squires warns Luke not to get involved with Stephanie. Our first suspicion is that he&#8217;s overprotective or jealous. He&#8217;s being protective all right &#8230; but not of her.</p><p>&#8220;The Wackness&#8221; alternates scenes of Squires and Luke behaving like teens with those chronicling Luke&#8217;s growing infatuation with Stephanie. They work because Kingsley and Thirlby know how to fill a screen.</p><p>Peck, on the other hand, is still learning. &#8220;The Wackness&#8221; starts slow largely because Peck can&#8217;t make his character half as interesting as those around him. He has an unformed, fuzzy quality. Eventually he gets there, but it takes awhile.</p><p>Quite aside from its dramatic ambitions, &#8220;The Wackness&#8221; does a nifty job of capturing the zeitgeist of Manhattan on the eve of Rudy Giuliani&#8217;s big crackdown on drugs, thugs, sex shops and colorful street life. The streets are safer now, sure, but do we really go to Times Square to shop in a Disney store?</p><p><hr class="infobox-hr-separator" /> <div class="infobox"> <strong><span class="infobox-head">&#8216;THE WACKNESS&#8217; &#9733;&#9733; 1/2 </span></strong><br /> <strong>Director: </strong>Jonathan Levine</p><p><strong>Cast: </strong>Ben Kingsley, Josh Peck, Olivia Thirlby, Mary-Kate Olsen</p><p><strong>Rated: R </strong>for pervasive drug use, language and some sexuality </p><p><strong>Running time:</strong> 1:35</p><p></div>