Chumscrubber film review

certificate_15

CHUMSCRUBBER

Chumscrubber is the latest in an increasingly long series of American independent films to look at teenage isolation and the communication gap with their parents, who themselves are often floundering in misery despite outward appearances of happiness. Richard Kelly's Donnie Darko and Darren Aaronofsky's Requiem For A Dream may have started this subgenre back in 2001, and Gus Van Sant's Elephant and recent Paranoid Park, Rian Johnson's Brick and Nick Cassavetes' Alpha Dogs are among the many films that have all covered similar ground since. Add a dollop of The Stepford Wives for the perfect blueprint for films of this ilk. The film's late arrival at market - given that it debuted at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival - has also lessened any potential power it might once have had.

Uneven direction and a plot that veers from reality to fantasy without any clear motive don't help matters. Jamie Bell stars as American suburbanite Dean, whose blue sky community is shattered by the suicide of one of his friends. Unbeknownst to the concerned parents - who themselves are desperately buying into the American dream through a variety of get rich quick schemes - the deceased was a low level pillpusher at the local High School, whose clients turn to Dean to extract the remains of his stash. Threats and kidnappings ensue, while Dean forms an unlikely relationship with Crystal (Camilla Belle), one of his would-be enemies.

The parents include Glenn Close as the bereaved mother of Dean's friend, Rita Wilson as a Desperate Housewives-style interior designer, and Ralph Fiennes as her mayor husband. All of the actors seem so caught up in the wannabe kookiness of it all that very few of them seem to be on the same page, and as a result the tone is wildly uneven. In a career of varied performances, most of them good, this must be Ralph Fiennes' strangest turn to date. It's left to Bell to deliver the film's most grounded performance, without which the whole project might have derailed completely.

The title refers to a menacing cartoon figure which plays a part in the yougsters' lives, but like so much of the rest of the film, even this seems shoehorned in to make a questionable point. The end result is both laboured and unfortunately behind the times.

Paul Hurley