The Chumscrubber (2005)

The Chumscrubber seems like another love-or-hate flick. Luckily, I am the one of the fans of this certain style, and I enjoyed every moment of it. If you happen to appreciate this, it is the no doubt that the distinctive way that appeals to you and touches you in a way that does not really work the other type of audience.For me, I think a great job is done by making what originally should be a serious drama about drugs and crimes less serious, noticeably by adding a dark comedic sense to the storyline. Though hilarious at times, the movie still deals with a very serious issue which exceeds the limits of any typical coming-of-age films. In fact, it is more proper to call this a coming-of-age story within a crime story.It is surprising to see this seemingly little movie has such famous cast members. Nevertheless, there is no need to worry and whine about wasted talents. Glenn Close, Ralph Fiennes and Jamie Bell, they all deliver excitingly captivating performances and the overall cast is a great ensemble that easily grasps attention from the viewers.

The Chumscrubber unfolds in a rather beautiful suburban locale somewhere in America, the kind with good hot weather and large detached whitewashed houses in which your bog standard family units operate amidst their impeccable lawns and smiley-smiley relationships with other neighbours. The very final shot of the film is a violent pull out of one the suburban streets, in which this sort of set up is established to exist, so as to reveal a specific shape of something all these streets and towns form when looking at it from afar. The idea that the whole set up is conforming to form a shape; an item no one living down there has any knowledge of and yet is technically right under their noses is apparent, that idea of lots of different traits and attitudes combining in order to manifest into an unnatural form. 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 family are initially presented to us by way of some interestingly alienating camera work, creating an entrenched sense on the audience's behalf that we're meant to share with the lead and how he views these people. 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. When we observe the self-obsessed and self-indulgent attitudes these adults possess, we realise this sort of disconnection and emptiness can, supposedly, lead only to bullying; drug-dealing and knife play amongst kids as the one relationship between young and old family members of any note sees Dean's father exploit him and his psychological situation in drawing on example of him in his books and experimenting through him the effects of certain pills. 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. The comparison calls to mind a grossly underwhelming 2006 independent American film named Brick, a film that fed off similar ideas not purely limited to genre, in its providing us with child leads and adult supporting characters but arriving with one too many frustrations to truly get involved. The reason for the gang of three doing what they did in abducting Charlie was with the assumption he was related to Dean and would be used as an item of threat to force Dean into attaining a stash of drugs in a young man named Troy's room. Troy was a recent victim of suicide and Dean's only friend; himself occupying a room or living quarter significantly cut off from the rest of his parents' house enforcing that alienated feel. From here, a narrative of intrigue and pot boiling unravels around these youths as sub-plots to do with adults played by a pretty meaty supporting cast and their own issues unravel as well.Posin's direction of the cast he's overseeing is wonderful, getting the best out of his predominantly young string of acting talent playing some rather tough roles wonderfully well as the elder members of the cast succeed in essentially 'dumbing-down' their characters so as to enhance that prominent distinction between younger and elder. The Chumscrubber is not a shallow film, it is a film about shallow people living a shallow existence and the hollowness of life in this would-be idyllic set up, the kind of which turns out to be truly ugly once on the inside; and I shall watch out for further projects from the man in the future.

I almost turned this off after 40 minutes but decided to stick it out in case it developed some semblance of a story line. It didn't.Knowing where to begin listing what's wrong with this film is challenging since there's so much ground to cover. But lack of originality is as good a place as any. The movie tries to cross American Beauty with Donnie Darko and pass the result off as fresh. But it fails from the get go and comes off as a contrived nervous breakdown.It seems the writer figured those successful movies could be replicated by following a simplistic formula. Just make every character goofy and unbelievable, throw in a handful of disjointed story lines and outrageous dialog, script in a few preposterous sexual situations, add a smattering of science fiction or hallucinations (not sure which), show "egdy" (read: absurdly excessive) drug use and dealing, include a suicide and some attempted murder, and drop f-bombs all over and there, you have a "profound" movie nobody will admit is incomprehensible.The film does not fit in any genre, but this is achieved through deliberate awkwardness. See! It's arty because you don't know how to react, and you don't know how to react because we've injected random, pointless contradictions. Perhaps this movie does fit into a genre, though: it's a disaster film. D-.

This is a movie with tremendous potential, but because of an incredibly poor choice for a title, has had little traction. It will undoubtedly be a cult classic. But it was a box office bomb. "Chumbscrubber" means nothing to most people. It means something now to anyone who has seen the movie, but I'm not sure that was the audience Mr. Posin sought. For the hip 16-20 age group, it may have been too complex and depressing. For anyone older, the idea of a movie based on a video game character is a put off. Then there's the problem of no sex, not good for a lot of young males. There's a little violence, at the end. What there is a lot of is talking and that usually requires a more mature audience to want to listen and ponder. The acting is, for the most part, superb. If one is going to make an art house movie, he has to cater to that crowd. Don't mix in video games. If one is going to appeal to teenagers, then do so... give them lots of action, sex and a car chase or two. First, figure out the audience desired. But bravo for trying to make something perceptive. Obviously most people in this country aren't perceptive or we wouldn't have such a dunce for Pres.