Chumscrubber, The DVD Review

"The Chumscrubber" reviews

DVD

The Chumscrubber

Author

anonymous

Date reviewed

2007-09-14 14:50:24

Provider

DVD Review

The subject of psychiatric drugs among teens is one that will one day produce an interesting film. Sadly, this ain't it. Chumscrubber stars Jamie Bell as Dean Stiffle, whose life turns upside down when his only friend commits suicide. Problematically his pal was also the local dope dealer, dope in this town being prescribed rather than proscribed drugs. When a local gang kidnap a youth to force Stiffle's into giving up his dead friend's stash, he decides to clean up his act instead.

Chumscrubber thinks it has lots of big things to say about suburban conformity and irresponsible parenting - almost all the adults in the film are too busy to pay attention to their children - as well as numbed-out kids. But it wastes a fine cast (Ralph Fiennes, Glenn Close) by making caricatures instead of characters, leaving Stiffle as virtually the only decent human being in the whole town. Bell (best known, of course, as Billy Elliot) does well as Stiffle, but he's ill-served by an overambitious, underdeveloped script and direction (Arie Posin making her debut) that just doesn't know how to get the best from an interesting premise.

Extras are a making of documentary and deleted scenes.