Wake up, dead man

I wish I had as good a reason for my hiatus as my friend at Bye Bye Shadowlands, but all I can say is that I've been doing other things. Work-wise, I wrote a couple articles for the Vikings' yearbook and continued to fine-tune the book project. Travel included a Daddy-daughter trip to San Diego to watch the red-hot Minnesota Twins take a pair from the Padres at Petco Park. We also had a family trip to Disneyland -- one day, in and out, ten hours at the park and then four hours home.

Oh, and I never did finish my thoughts on CineVegas. I saw a couple more movies that second week -- two documentaries that I loved, and one feature film that was brilliant. I'll break down the documentaries later this week, but here's my brief review of The Wackness.

Sir Ben Kingsley headlines a dynamite cast that includes two rising stars -- Josh Peck (from the Nickelodeon show "Drake and Josh") and Olivia Thirlby (a.k.a. Juno's best friend). Peck's character is a recent high school graduate spending his final summer at home in Manhattan in 1994. He makes ends meet by selling pot out of a snack cart, and even uses the dope to pay off his therapist, Kingsley, a hapless self-involved goofball who's losing his wife and stepdaughter (Thirlby) day by painful day.

Peck shows he has the chops to move beyond the child-actor stage and Thirlby clearly is more than second-banana material. The two have a summer romance that includes a few twists, but predictably ends poorly. Still, this is a sweet look back at both the 90s (lots of references to Cobain and that new mayor, some Giuliani guy) and the coming-of-age summer that we all had or at least think we did. The verdict: 4 stars.