The Chumscrubber
Tags: violence, comedy, boring

Plot synopsis:
Troy Johnson (Josh Janowicz), the supplier of prescription drugs to fellow high school students in the fictional southern California town of Hillside, commits suicide. Troy's best friend Dean Stiffle (Jamie Bell), is prescribed more antidepressants by his psychiatrist father Bill (William Fichtner) after discovering the body. When Dean returns to school, he is antagonized by drug dealers Billy (Justin Chatwin) and Lee (Lou Taylor Pucci), who were supplied by Troy. Their friend, Crystal Falls (Camilla Belle), flirts with Dean, but he soon realizes that her true intentions are for Dean to retrieve the remaining drugs in Troy's home and refuses to cooperate. To force Dean to procure the drugs, Billy and Lee plan to kidnap Dean's brother, Charlie (Rory Culkin), as a ransom, but they end up kidnapping another boy named Charlie Bratley (Thomas Curtis) instead.
The kidnappers hold Charlie Bratley – whose parents are unaware that he is missing – overnight at Crystal's home. Dean eventually agrees to go to Troy's house to find the drugs. Upon delivery, Billy discovers that the bag doesn't contain the prescription drugs and starts a fight with Dean, leading to Dean's arrest. While trying to explain everything to Officer Lou Bratley (John Heard), Charlie's father, Dean reveals that his brother Charlie replaced the drugs with a bag of the vitamins that their mother Allie (Allison Janney) sells. Neither Officer Bratley nor Dean's father believes his story, but he is released, whereupon his father increases his dosage of antidepressants. Meanwhile, Charlie Stiffle crushes the real drugs and puts them into a casserole that his mother made for Troy's memorial.
The next day is Troy's memorial service and the wedding of Mayor Michael Ebbs (Ralph Fiennes) to Charlie Bratley's mother Terri (Rita Wilson). Lou finally realizes that his son actually has been kidnapped and heads out to look for him. Now at Lee's house, Crystal asks Lee to help stop the kidnapping scheme, but he does not comply. Crystal goes to Dean's house for help, where she finds him hallucinating about Troy's death and finally expressing his grief. Meanwhile, a paranoid Lee, encouraged by Billy, tries to kill Charlie Bratley to avoid being caught, but Charlie fights back and slices the knife through Billy's eye. Billy runs out into the street, screaming in pain, and is hit by Lou's police car.
Dean attends Troy's memorial, where all of the visitors are intoxicated by the drugs that are in his mother's casserole. Troy's mother, Carrie (Glenn Close), discloses to Dean that she never knew her son. Dean tells her about Troy and acknowledges that they were best friends, and she thanks him. Billy is later sent to prison. Lee, who successfully changes the narrative of his involvement during the trial, is acquitted. A closing voice over explains that Dean and Crystal "escape together", and they are shown kissing.

Review: Some lucky distributor is going to make bank off of this great film by a skilled director and soulful screenwriter.Although I was pleasantly surprised as famous face after famous face came on the screen, Jamie Bell (main character Dean) is without equal.
Suburbia pops up on the screen, one house at a time, and it's the most beautiful and peaceful neighborhood you've ever seen until five minutes later when Dean (Jamie Bell) walks into a room and finds his best friend's dead body hanging by a rope.
At the same time, movies from the second and much smaller group for some reason (which is hardly explainable sometimes) get all possible attention and sometimes they can replace mainstream production in theaters.Chumscrubber, which obviously belongs to the first group, is a rather unique and courageous satirical attempt of showing on the surface quiet and peaceful life of suburbia and middle class people there.
The children are completely left on their own and soon Dean realizes that nobody's noticed that a kid is not home for a long time and he's the only one who could do anything to resolve a conflict even if it is no concern of him.The movie cast unites too many famous actors for a small budgeted indie movie.
Many of the performances are top drawer as are the unexpected cameos and all of these aspects culminate to a cult dark comedy.Some will be pre-emptive as the film is about drugs, teenagers, high school, bullying and well-worn characters with a cool soundtrack thrown in for good measure.
I had heard that it was similar to American Beauty which I liked but I didn't need another film about dysfunctional middle and upper class families living in suburbia.I was very pleasantly surprised when I saw it on Tuesday night, July 26th in Portland at a screening.
At times it seems the teenagers are the adults, while they run around carefree and behave like children.A couple of things you notice straight into the movie are Jamie Bell and the art of casting against expected type.
The adults coming dangerously close to the events of the teenagers' lives, almost grasping the actuality of what is happening, and either missing the point or choosing to avoid it totally.The perfect example of this is seeing the Mayor and his wife carry on towards their wedding day plans avoiding the fact that their son appears to be missing, and that that life in general seems to be falling apart around them.
No, it's a bit poor, but it's not the true climax of the movie.There's one other thing I didn't like, the Chumscrubber itself is based on a computer game character that some of the teenagers play through the movie, usually in the background.
It wasn't needed, I found myself confused and distracted by it, and I really think the movie would have been better without it.What this movie is good for, are some great castings, and the excellent performances by the actors playing the teenagers.
I was very surprised at just how strong Jamie Bell really is, and my feelings for Glenn Close (as an actress) were just reinforced from watching the last season of The Shield.This has a great plot, some great actors and performances, and is a thoroughly enjoyable movie that does have some things to say about adults and teenagers.
However, they kidnap the wrong boy, leading to a confusion of identities, and many opportunities for humor that are quickly lost in this dense film.The reaction at Sundance to this film was mixed, with perhaps half of the audience reacting as I did, and the other half claiming to have enjoyed it.My take on this film is that is was entirely devoid of heart and humor, and failed in its attempts to entertain.One scene that does work comes at the end of the film, between Dean (Jamie Bell) and the mother of his dead friend (played by Glenn Close).
The main character, Dean Stiffle(Jamie Bell) is a teenager with not many friends,but his "best" friend Troy commits suicide and from there on there is a series of incidents linking characters together in this small postcard-perfect California neighborhood.It is said to be an indie film,but for an indie film it has some big actors in it.I don't want to reveal much else,but its a very interesting movie with wonderful cinematography and acting with actors such as Jamie Bell,Justin Chatwin,Ralph Fiennes,Glenn Close,Camille Bell,Lou Taylor Pucci and much more.The Chumscrubber could be one of the biggest movies to touch on teenagers since Donnie Darko.Everyone has their own opinion,but this movie is one to be checked out so give it a try..
It's not like you can blame any one thing for the way society is anyway, so saying that this movie does that, is absolutely ludicrous and misses the point.
This movie uses a video game character that aptly describes the feelings, a kid who got his head cut off but came back to life and is neither alive, nor dead.
The main character longs for his father's acknowledgement and acceptance so he does whatever his father asks him to, the father hungers for importance so he writes a book about his son's problems and ignores his family, the mother wanted to be loved and accepted so she sells veggie vitamins looking for a family who will cherish her...It's about the solution being right in front of our face but instead of reaching out fulfilling our true desires we find some tepid remedy ignoring the reality of things as they slowly build and not seeing it until everything explodes...about listless entertainment and never knowing satisfying pleasure.
Anyways, if you liked American Beauty, or Donnie Darko, or Wristcutters: a love story...watch this film!!.
The story was good, the acting was excellent, the casting was flawless, the overall atmosphere was perfection, the intended audience reactions were felt (whether you wanted to feel them or not), and there were enough subtleties to make you feel better about yourself as a relative-to-body-size-large-brained-primate for catching them.Every actor in The Chumscrubber will go on from this movie and become new people and new faces all over again, never to be remembered strictly as "that guy in The Chumscrubber".
Why he would care whether this kid lives or dies makes no sense in light of him being on heavy meds to the point of not caring about much of anything.One thing I really like about this movie is the expose on ineffective parenting approaches.
By the end of this movie it has really entered after-school special territory and lost all credibility whatsoever.The name of this movie is based on a video game but that tie-in was poorly executed and inessential.I didn't think this movie was all that great but it did cover some topics that tend to be all of the areas where suburban people tend to be hypocritical failures.If you wanna get down with your teen angst and hate some suburbanites with your gonads and strife for a while, this is your movie.
The humorous scenes where the teens tell parents they are kidnapping a little boy so they can buy drugs compel laughs because the parents think the kids are attempting precocious satire.
The over the top tale about kids abusing prescription drugs could have been a gritty hard hitting flick, but it plays out like corny never-aired ABC After School Special.Jamie Bell plays Dean Stiffle, an emotionally disconnected boy who discovers his best friend hanging by the neck and doesn't tell anyone about it.
Some laughably skinny bullies from his high school want him to get some pills out of his dead friend's room, so they kidnap his brother to force him into complying, but it's really not his brother because they grab the wrong kid, and lots of people play a video game called The Chumscrubber that has a guy who carries his head around, and somehow that's supposed to be ironic or symbolize something that I'm apparently too dumb to connect together.The cast is outstanding with Glen Close, Rita Wilson, Ralph Fiennes, Allison Janney, Carrie-Ann Moss, and John Heard, but never has such a brilliant bunch of actors been wasted on such garbage.
The whole thing plays like some preachy film project from a mother who's kid died from an overdose.I shook my head and groaned during most of the movie that meandered all over the place and seemed to have a tough time deciding whether you wanted to feel sorry, or just laugh at all the screwed up characters.
It was fairly gripping and uncomfortable to watch, but the film segues to a humorously violent scene that seemed like it was ripped from a Monty Python film that had much of the audience laughing.The Chumscrubber is a loathsome empty piece that ends up being a headshakingly bad movie going experience.
Being a fan of both American Beauty and Donnie Darko (two films the Chumscrubber was compared to) I had high expectations and was expecting excellent writing and dark Ironic wit.
Ever since Donnie Darko - that excellent half teen satire / half sci fi and horror movie - it seems like it is all of the rage at the moment to make Donnie Darko-esquire movies.Chumscrubber tells the story of a teenager who gets caught up in a drug dealing ring at his high school.
I mean - the acting is pretty good and the plot is sort of "fairly original" but it didn't really do it for me.Maybe I found the whole drug dealing syndicate a bit convoluted - or maybe I thought I had seen this sort of thing before (eg: Donnie Darko) - and done so much better...Most of the characters are pretty vile and unappealing (see Billy).It was OK - but maybe I missed something...?.
Arie Posin's clever and different way of telling a story, the brilliant cast that turned up for this movie, the FABULOUS soundtrack by James Horner, and of course, the things you can learn about American suburbia in this film makes it one of my favorite.
In the making of the movie, the director claims that he wants to have parents watch this movie and know what life is like for their teenagers.
Such is the way in The Chumscrubber, a 2005 film from Israeli-born writer/director Arie Posin exploring the shallowness and vacuity of contemporary living in a warm, sunny American locale as people with successful jobs and promising kids are placed under a microscope of bleak comedy twinned with an aesthetic of realism blurred with surrealism.The film centres around a young, disillusioned male named Dean (Bell) and his relationship with his distanced family on one strand with his dangerous and temperamental relationship with a small gang of other youths, lead by the drug-dealing sociopath Billy (Chatwin), on the other.
Dean's father, a successful author and psychiatric doctor named Bill (Fichtner), has his back to us in a relatively long and unbroken take as we waltz around the family's kitchen and living room area; the little brother fixated on a shallow and vacuous computer game, the wife/mother on the phone speaking about whatever suggesting whiffs of domesticisation; while Bill weaves in and out of the place with his back to the camera, it's the closest we get to a form of identification of him.The film has that disconnected sensibility about it, that parents and their children are never quite on the same plain, indeed a police officer's son is essentially kidnapped very early on but doesn't quite realise until much later; other parents allow their problems, trivial things such as making sure order amidst who is in ownership of various pots and pans amongst neighbours is intact furthering that sense of depressing domesticisation as the vacuous gushing over the purchasing of dresses in locals stores hammer home the point.
But around all of this, we are invited into looking at this interesting, intrinsic little narrative Posin has weaved linked to Dean and his ongoing feud with Billy plus his cohorts: a deputy in Lee (Taylor-Pucci) and the teenage femme-fatale of sorts Crystal (Belle), of whom have brought into their possession young Charlie (Curtis) whom they have mistaken for Dean's brother, who's also called Charlie and played by Macaulay's younger brother, Rory Culkin.Posin's integrating of this plot around all of this substance is well crafted, here's a film that renders most of the adults childish and infantile in their actions and behaviours but the manner in which the adolescents behave see them strut around as if they were fully grown men and women living a life of potential sleaze, crime and terror.
but, as despicable as Billy's machinations are, the real focus is the insanity of the adult community, who determinedly remain blind to the events in the world around them.The truly incredible cast (especially for a film that few have heard of or seen) includes Glenn Close as Todd's mother, whose grief seems at first to make her the most imbalanced character, but who ultimately shows herself to be more connected to what's real than any other adult; Rita Wilson as the career-minded mother of the kidnapped child, too distracted by her re-marriage plans to be aware that her son is even gone; Ralph Fiennes as Wilson's husband-to-be, obsessed by his perception of an unknown, beneficent power guiding his life; Carrie-Ann Moss as a woman whose sexual security is so threatened that she attempts to prove herself in competition with her daughter; and William Fichtner as Dean's psychiatrist father, who uses his son as a case example in his pop psychiatry self-help books.Where Chumscrubber succeeds best is in portraying the reality of the teen who is pressured to achieve, even as he or she is convinced by their keepers of their unworthiness; and compelled toward success in a suburban milieu where "success" is itself a tawdry mediocrity.Unlike Donnie Darko, where the title character ultimately sacrifices himself to preserve the very landscape that gave birth to his misery, Chumscrubber offers little that is worthy of redemption in its bleak suburbia; even the main character's romantic interest, the very appealing Camilla Belle as Crystal Falls, is tainted.Though the ending suggests that perhaps there is a wise, beneficent power that ultimately guides us through this vale of dung, the overall impression I had of this film was of a sharp cynicism that is all-too-accurate, so that even the sunshiny image that brings the film to its happy conclusion seems a sardonic slap in the face..
I don't hate American Beauty- I just thought it was one of the most overrated movies that left me going "and the point was?" The Chumscrubber does not do any of this.
This film takes a look at the adults of today and how they're so focused on themselves, that they don't take time to notice their kids or the things happening around them.
There are subplots that involve each of the teenagers and their parents which are dark and interesting.This film is very different from the usual thing you see in the cinemas nowadays, but in a good way.
There are flaws, for sure, but as far as I've seen it's the most worthwhile film of its type.Some of the characters are a little over-done, like Billy, but this is a result of the experiences of the writer/directors.
Its message is how parents are too wrapped up in their own - legally medicated - worlds to notice what's happening to their own children.I can see a lot of people finding this film 'too weird' to be enjoyable, but, put simply, if you're a fan of 'Donnie Darko' type movies, you should like what's happening here, too.
I think that's because there weren't any.The film follows the life of Dean, a high school boy whose best friend, Troy recently committed suicide.
"Billy" was the most unbearable, over the top, and obnoxious character I've seen in a movie since Paulie Shore in Son in Law. And as for Jamie Bell, strike one was his dumb and useless sub plot character in King Kong, strike two, The Chumscrubber, where he plays a flat, boring and completely uninteresting Donnie Darko-esquire character with little to no explained motivation as to why he is acting so weird or so alienated.
The movie reminded me of Donnie Darko, only it made less sense, if that makes sense.There are some semi-big names in the cast, like Ralph Fiennes and Glenn Close and that British dancer kid Jamie Bell, who spoke with a remarkably convincing American accent.
You gotta admit that it's probably not as easy as it once was to come up with a fresh angle on a suburban teen angst plot, but Chumscrubber pretty much delivers.As the story unfolds, Jamie Bell's best friend is a high school drug dealer who keeps his classmates happy and high until the day he hangs himself at home while his mom is throwing a big party.
at least not until the very end of the film when the teen angst tension is released and a boy actually talks to an adult and the adult actually listens and the tears flow and we all learn to our great surprise that life would be so much easier if we all listened to each other and kept our eyes peeled for dolphins.There's a lot more to the story involving some bad kids who look less like thugs than Abercrombie and Fitch models who kidnap Jamie Bell's little brother in order to blackmail Jamie into finding the dead kid's stash of drugs.
He is not the same as others, but he feels good in that world, as Din in Hillside...Well i think its very stupid to talk about such kind of movies, because everybody must think about it by his own - If you like strong, funny and interesting films like "American Beauty" or "Tumbsucker" - you must see it..