Chumscrubber, The Review

"The Chumscrubber" reviews

Movie

The Chumscrubber

Author

anonymous

Date reviewed

2007-06-07 00:00:00

Provider

MyMovies

Review

It's hard not to feel a bit sorry for "The Chumscrubber": it finally gets a release after sitting on the shelf for well over a year, only to have its plot-related thunder stolen by the superior "Alpha Dog". Sadly, in addition to that, it just isn't very good. Directed by Arie Posin, "The Chumscrubber" takes place in the Smalltown USA community of Hillside, where high school student Dean (Jamie Bell) discovers that his drug-dealing best friend Troy has hanged himself in his bedroom. This prompts Dean's drug-using classmates (Justin Chatwin, Camilla Belle and Lou Taylor Pucci) to embark on an ill-advised scheme whereby they'll kidnap Dean's younger brother (Rory Culkin) in return for Dean retrieving Troy's stash. However, things don't go to plan and they kidnap the wrong boy (Thomas Curtis as Charlie Bratley), whose mother (Rita Wilson) is too busy planning her wedding to even notice his disappearance.

The actors are fine: Jamie Bell nails the American accent and delivers a likeable, if somewhat passive performance, while Chatwin and Pucci are impressive as the smalltown bully and his henchman. There's a real sense of unpredictable menace to Chatwin's performance and the violence, when it finally comes, seems believably chaotic and genuine.

Unfortunately, despite a number of good scenes, the film never quite comes together. For one thing, the message ("Look what happens when adults don't communicate with their kids") is somewhat trite and delivered with a sledgehammer to boot; for another, the symbolism of Posin's "Chumscrubber" motif (a headless video game character who recurs throughout the film) is unclear and badly incorporated into the film.

In short, "The Chumscrubber" is something of a disappointment, despite decent performances from its talented cast.

Movie

The Chumscrubber

Author

anonymous

Date reviewed

2007-06-01 13:03:05

Provider

Review

Ambitious in name, ambitious by nature, Chumscrubber is a film that desperately wants to tell us something profound about modern suburbia but undermines its own message by laying it on too thick.

Jamie Bell (still best known as Billy Elliott) stars as Dean Stiffle, a high school loner whose best/only friend and neighbourhood dealer in psychiatric drugs, commits suicide. When the local bullies kidnap a kid to blackmail Stiffle into helping them locate the dead boy's stash, he suddenly cleans his act and drags himself out of the numbness that afflicts everyone in this suburban hellhole. The subtitle of this film should be that tabloid stand-by - 'blame the parents' - as their mass indifference to their offsprings' problems is the recurring theme of the film.

With a fine cast, including Ralph Fiennes as the town mayor and Glenn Close as the dead dealer's self-absorbed mother, one of Chumscrubber's greatest sins is that it wastes them. The adults are all caricatures, as is virtually everyone in this medicated town apart from Stiffle. It's in this determination to make important statements while painting life in primary colours that makes this film fall over itself.

There is a great film to be made about the increasing prescription of psychiatric drugs for the young, but this isn't it.