'The Wackness' Will Be Vindicated by History

But seriously. I went to see The Wackness because my own dirty cynicism said, Go see Mary Kate's terrible movie in which you're sure she'll be terrible. Go see the way in which your generation is having its favorite music re-packaged and sold back to it by shameless panderers

What I actually saw surprised me quite pleasantly and upon further review could be some of the best screen writing I've seen in a looong time. The script captures adolescent longing, the awfulness of summer, middle-class downward mobility, gentrification, cocaine parents and a certain era of New York (before the hipster industrial complex took over) with great nuance and sensitivity. Contrary to the last decade's slew of 80's nostalgia mongering movies, The Wackness doesn't indulge in frenetic MTV editing–it's slow, mellow, and intermittently melancholy in pace and while the soundtrack is an important part of the movie, the score doesn't make the movie into a music video. Josh Peck, playing Luke Schapiro, is so many boys I went to high school with, except Peck humanizes that stoic shyness. Olivia Thirlby, the love interest, Stephanie, is complexly written for a teenage girl in a movie. She's pretty, self-involved, at the brink of perhaps becoming a more compassionate, nicer adult but still stuck in selfish kid ways. She's not the untouchable popular girl of so many teen movies.

Most interestingly for me, the movie's setting, New York in the early to mid 90's, is as much a part of the dramatic action as any other plot in the movie. The refrain "This city's changing," is heard over and over. It's a great contrast to 2008's "This city's changed." Does anyone remember the Giuliani with devil horns stickers plastered everywhere in those years, before the clean-up of the city was accepted and total?

Mugging and Preening

So, Mussolini was a total clown. Watching footage of him, it's really hard to fathom how a man so clumsy, so obviously devoid of grace and intelligence became the architect of Italian fascism. Clumsy, yes, and hammy, but also possessing of an incredible physical self-confidence; a whole nation swept off its feet by the modern equivalent of an ugly male porn star, the ones that are cast so that dudes don't inadvertently get turned on watching straight porn. Mussolini mugs for the camera and for his audience in ways that are unthinkable for a politician–he moved like an oiled, tanned, body-building 70's era Ahnold (oh wait....). Is this odd kind of anti-charisma all it takes to rule the world?

Berlusconi is a fitting heir.