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Movies / On DVD / The Chumscrubber
The Chumscrubber

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The Chumscrubber (2005)

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Reviews Counted:58

Fresh:20

Rotten:38

Average Rating:4.9/10

Consensus: This derivative poke at suburbia falls short of delivering a scathing indictment of upper middle-class disconnect.

Rated: 15 [See Full Rating] for language, violent content, drug material and some sexuality

Runtime: 1 hr 48 mins

Genre: Dramas

Theatrical Release:08-06-2007

Synopsis: When Dean Stiffle ("BILLY ELLIOT"'s Jamie Bell) discovers the body of his best friend, Troy (Josh Janowicz), hanging in his bedroom, he doesn't bother telling any of the parents in his postcard... When Dean Stiffle ("BILLY ELLIOT"'s Jamie Bell) discovers the body of his best friend, Troy (Josh Janowicz), hanging in his bedroom, he doesn't bother telling any of the parents in his postcard perfect California neighborhood, figuring they wouldn't care. Dean shows no outward signs of remorse, and his father (William Fichtner), author of best-selling pop psychology books with titles such as The Happy Accident, treats his son with all the affection of a lab rat. "Dad," Dean deadpans, "if you write about me again in one of your stupid books, I'm going to kill you." While Dean shrugs his way through high school wearing a psychic cloak of invisibility, his best friend Troy—the school's leading drug dealer—throws the community's carefully maintained psychotherapeutic balance into disarray when he hangs himself during one of his mother's pool parties. At school, in an effort to get their hands on Troy's stash, Dean's classmates Billy (Justin Chatwin), Crystal (Camilla Belle), and Lee (Lou Taylor Pucci) plot a kidnapping scheme: they'll abduct Dean's younger brother, Charlie (Rory Culkin), and hold him for ransom in exchange for Dean retrieving Troy's pills. Only, the hapless gang kidnaps the wrong boy, snatching Charley Bratley (Thomas Curtis) instead. Son of divorced parents—police officer Lou Bratley (John Heard), and interior decorator Terri (Rita Wilson)—Charley's disappearance goes unnoticed by his mother, who is too consumed with the planning of her elaborate second wedding to town mayor Michael Ebbs (Ralph Fiennes), to realize her son has gone missing. As these characters careen through their white-picket-fence world, each pursuing some dream, some ideal, some panacea they believe will make them happy—be it prescription or illicit drugs, vitamin supplements, the perfect body, a fairy tale wedding, self-help books, or New Age mysticism—the fractured and fractious quality of life in American suburbia is rendered with crystalline precision. The kids and adults of Hillside live their lives entirely separately—like two opposing camps—a mournful divide played out in a visual scheme of sun-dappled, hallucinatory realism. Deciding both whether and how to negotiate these two worlds is Dean, a character whose very name purposely invokes the entire history of troubled teenage movie outsiders, from James Dean in Rebel Without A Cause to Christian Slater's J.D. in Heathers. . . . . . And everywhere there is "The Chumscrubber." A totemic pop culture presence that prowls his own post-apocalyptic landscape peopled with subhuman demons and freaks, the ubiquitous "Chumscrubber" bubbles up in television cartoons, in violent video games, on posters and T-shirts and stickers and rearview mirrors as. . . An embodiment of teen rage? A manifestation of the town's repression? A shadow vision of its collective unconscious? "Don't ignore me," myriad characters say to one another over the course of The Chumscrubber, and that echoing line of dialogue—that plea—becomes a mantra in this film about American disconnection, be it generational, familial, cultural, or pharmaceutical. Only one character, Mayor Ebbs, holds steadfast to the conviction that everything connects. After suffering a freak head injury, Mayor Ebbs comes to believe that something truly profound is scattered beneath the surface of suburban banality, a belief borne out in The Chumscrubber's beautiful and hard-won conclusion. As the teens play out their botched kidnapping, Troy's devastated mother (Glenn Close) plans a memorial service, and Terri and Michael prepare for their wedding, the parallel story strands converge in the film's immensely satisfying culmination. Shakespeare contended that comedies end in weddings and tragedies end in funerals: in a perfect expression of The Chumscrubber's tricky tonal highwire act—a razor's edge balance of comedy and drama—this remarkably assured debut has the good grace and audacity to end with both, occurring simultaneously, on a perfectly manicured cul-de-sac. Everything connects. At first glance perhaps evoking the despair-beneath-the-hedges genre, The Chumscrubber possesses a wondrous sense of American magic realism uniquely its own. First-time director Arie Posin is also exceedingly generous toward his characters; investing each of the players in his large cast with a novelistic sense of empathy, ambiguity, and complexity. A work of brutal, uncompromising honesty The Chumscrubber is also, somehow, miraculously devoid of vitriol. Richly layered, thematically provocative, filled with epiphanic visual moments and a haunting original score by James Horner, stocked with the deepest cast bench of any recent ensemble film, The Chumscrubber announces the arrival of a major film artist. The Chumscrubber is directed by Arie Posin and written by Zac Stanford. Produced by Lawrence Bender and Bonnie Curtis, and edited by William S. Scharf and Arthur Schmidt, with Lawrence Sher serving as director of photography, The Chumscrubber will have its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on January 25th, 2005. -- © Newmarket Films [More]

Starring: Jamie Bell, Glenn Close, Ralph Fiennes, William Fichtner

Starring: Jamie Bell, Glenn Close, Ralph Fiennes, William Fichtner, Josh Janowicz, Justin Chatwin, Camilla Belle, Lou Taylor Pucci, Rory Culkin, Thomas Curtis, John Heard, Rita Wilson

Director: Arie Posin

Director: Arie Posin
Screenwriter: Zac Stanford
Producer: Lawrence Bender, Bonnie Curtis
Studio: Newmarket Films

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Reviews for The Chumscrubber

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1 - 20 (sorted by date; UK critics are listed first)
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Click to read the article

Full Review Source: ViewLondon | comment Comment
06/19/07
Matthew Turner
Matthew Turner
ViewLondon
N/R

Click to read the article

Full Review Source: Guardian [UK] | comment Comment
06/09/07
Peter Bradshaw
Peter Bradshaw
Guardian [UK]
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

It’s a surreal, offbeat comedy where the kidnappers are hopelessly inept while Bell feels hopelessly at sea.

Full Review Source: Times [UK] | comment Comment
06/08/07
James Christopher
James Christopher
Times [UK]
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

Despite the top-drawer cast assembled for his debut feature, the director Arie Posin's account of emotional dislocation in the 'burbs is stymied by a fatally uneven tone and a growing suspicion that we've been down this road many, many times before.

Full Review Source: Independent | comment Comment
06/08/07
Anthony Quinn
Anthony Quinn
Independent

A strong cast promises great things, but The Chumscrubber loses itself on the way to its indie aspirations.

Full Review Source: Channel 4 Film | comment Comment
06/08/07
Channel 4 Film
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

Sadly, despite Bell’s eye-catching performance and Glenn Close’s disturbing Stepford Wife portrayal, I found this messy movie as self-absorbed as most of its characters.

Full Review Source: Sun Online | comment Comment
06/08/07
Johnny Vaughan
Johnny Vaughan
Sun Online

Ten years ago, The Chumscrubber might have seemed groundbreaking. Today, it’s not just unoriginal but as dull and nondescript as a Barratt home.

Full Review Source: Daily Mirror [UK] | comment Comment
06/08/07
Daily Mirror [UK]
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

It is witty and subversive, with flashes of magical realism and apocalyptic CG that both provokes and unnerves.

Full Review Source: Total Film | comment Comment
06/08/07
Total Film
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

A tragic waste of acting talent, with nothing new to say. Can we please now politely close the door on middle-class repression before we get really angry?

Full Review Source: Empire Magazine | comment Comment
06/08/07
Olly Richards
Olly Richards
Empire Magazine
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

Much like its characters: decorative, entertaining and emotionally empty.

Full Review Source: Time Out | comment Comment
06/07/07
Anna Smith
Anna Smith
Time Out
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

Even though it feels derivative, this blackly comical suburban drama is loaded with terrific details. And it features yet another excellent performance from Jamie Bell.

Full Review Source: Shadows on the Wall | comment Comment
06/02/07
Rich Cline
Rich Cline
Shadows on the Wall

Posin aims for are out of his reach and he's left to scrabble desperately for a story to plug in the gaps.

Full Review Source: BBC | comment Comment
05/26/07
Stella Papamichael
Stella Papamichael
BBC
Top Critic Icon Top Critic
N/R

Click to read the article

Full Review Source: Cinema Crazed | comment Comment
04/29/09
Felix Vasquez Jr.
Felix Vasquez Jr.
Cinema Crazed

Such is the sordid state of affairs in that emerging genre that might be termed suburban noir, as it inches ever closer to horror and the supernatural.

Full Review Source: Long Island Press | comment Comment
04/19/07
Prairie Miller
Prairie Miller
Long Island Press

An agonizingly bad movie.

Full Review Source: Film Journal International | comment Comment
03/01/07
Shirley Sealy
Shirley Sealy
Film Journal International
N/R

Click to read the article

Full Review Source: Seattle Times | comment Comment
01/11/07
Moira MacDonald
Moira MacDonald
Seattle Times

The complex screenplay is admirable for its plot structure, its dark humour and its storytelling tricks, but the film ends up playing like a well developed project about teen-parent alienation, while itself alienating many of us in the audience.

Full Review Source: Urban Cinefile | comment Comment
06/05/06
Urban Cinefile Critics
Urban Cinefile Critics
Urban Cinefile

Almost = Magnolia Pieces of April. Nice script, tight direction; but riddled with a disturbing-tension, &cynical outlook more apt to unsettle than entertain.

Full Review Source: Hollywood Report Card | comment Comment
03/24/06
Ross Anthony
Ross Anthony
Hollywood Report Card

Wittier than Not Another Teen Movie, stealthier than Storytelling

Full Review Source: Film Freak Central | comment Comment
01/25/06
Bill Chambers
Bill Chambers
Film Freak Central

Click to read the article

Full Review Source: JoBlo's Movie Emporium | comment Comment
12/06/05
JoBlo
JoBlo
JoBlo's Movie Emporium
 
 
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Latest News for The Chumscrubber

January 08, 2009: RT Interview: Jamie Bell talks Defiance and Dance
Jamie Bell tap-danced his way into the national consciousness with his breakthrough performance in Billy Elliot nine years ago. Since then he has worked with heavyweight screen... More...

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