'The Chumscrubber': Another (yawn) suburban satire
By CHRIS GARCIA
Austin American-Statesman
Edgy suburban satire is officially kaput with the obnoxiously derivative "The Chumscrubber," a grim comedy that strains for hipster cred by copying other, better films, often with alarming brazenness. The folks behind "American Beauty" and "Donnie Darko," for starters, might want to consider their legal options. Lifting the tone, ideas and even scenes from those films, "Chumscrubber" shovels out flaccid and pretentious social commentary that only very young filmmakers could mistake for urgent revelations. Down to the cloyingly cryptic title, the movie tries much too hard.
Newmarket Films
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In their debut feature, director Arie Posin and screenwriter Zac Stanford treat the quiet desperation of suburbia and antidepressant chic not as wilted cliches, but as exciting new territory plump with shocking insights — insights mulled and exhausted in everything from "American Beauty" to "Desperate Housewives." Like "Donnie Darko," it's about an adolescent suburban boy so disaffected by the benighted conformity around him that he drops into the margins. The brooding outcast becomes a revolted spectator of upper-middle-class lives deadened by self-absorption and soulless consumption.
Here it is Dean Stiffle (a blank Jamie Bell, of "Billy Elliot" fame) who is the anointed one, a misfit too wise for the mentality bred in the hyper-manicured housing development in which he lives. He sees through every easy satirical target the filmmakers set up: his parents' vapid vocations — Dad is a self-help guru, Mom a huckster for miraculous vitamin tablets; the school bullies' pathetic need for attention; marital dysfunction; and, mostly, the rampant bad parenting that allows his best friend to kill himself without anyone noticing.
After flailing with clunky metaphors (those painted dolphins — oh my) and dimly plausible scenarios (the kidnapped boy and bloodthirsty bullies), "The Chumscrubber" is finally an indictment of inattentive parents swallowed by narcissism. From the movie's murky earnestness — an almost admirable resolve to locate shuttering profundity — the message that emerges is: Know your children!
Then there's the dead guy. Troy, Dean's suicide friend, materializes here and there as a video-game character (named the Chumscrubber), spooking Dean as he dispenses advice to the troubled teen. Not only is this conceit a direct steal of the dead guy in the rabbit suit who visits Donnie Darko, but the dead Troy speaks in exactly the same computer-altered voice as the rabbit fellow. It is simply astonishing.
What stands out most watching "The Chumscrubber" is the pedigreed cast, including Glenn Close, Ralph Fiennes, William Fichtner, Carrie-Anne Moss, Rita Wilson and Allison Janney (who played a variation on the suburban wife in "American Beauty"). The actors probably thought doing this film was a good idea, jumping aboard the hip ship for a career-refreshing cruise. As good as the actors can be — Close memorably telegraphs the emotional complexity stirring beneath her glistening mask of narcotized tranquility — you feel bad for them for believing they were part of a sure-fire hipster project that will enjoy a hearty cult half-life. Ladies and gentlemen, you have been duped.
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