The Chumscrubber (2005)

Dean Stiffle (Jamie Bell) discovers the body of his best friend Troy and doesn t bother telling any of the parents in his postcard-perfect California neighborhood. He knows that these families prefer to go about their lives by ignoring reality entirely. But when this scandal hits home will they take notice or will they continue along their merry self-medicated way?Starring Glenn Close (The Stepford Wives) Ralph Fiennes (The Constant Gardener) Rita Wilson (Runaway Bride) Jamie Bell (Billy Elliot) and Justin Chatwin (War of the Worlds) The Chumscrubber brings together an all-star cast and is being hailed as darkly comic it s got a great cast of familiar faces and the best of the best of tomorrow s talent. (Quint Aintitcoolnews.com).System Requirements:Running Time: 108 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY Rating: R UPC: 678149196726 Manufacturer No: 91967 Product Description

Dark, Real and Emotional

A scary look inside the prestine suburbs of California, Chumscrubber shows us what it's like to be a kid in today's society where Bread, Circus and Finncial success are all that matter. The acting is very well done, especially for such young people, and the script is also quite good moving the characters along as they learn the lessons associated with their stations.

It's a pretty emotional story, it kinda leaves you with a bad taste in your mouth, especially if you see how allegorical and applicable it is to our world today. Overall it's a good movie and I reccomend it whole-heartedly. April 21, 2008

Unexpected delight

A true reflection of todays youth. Accurately shows parents lack of focus on their kids and that they are using drugs. Jamie Bell plays the main character very well. April 4, 2008

GREAT cast, not a great movie...

I rented this because I thought such a great cast would hopefully mean it was a good movie, and it sounded interesting, but unfortunately it didn't deliver. (As always - bad script = bad movie.) It has a few moments here and there, but mostly it's kind of a mess. It's too bad; I have to wonder what attracted these really excellent actors to it, but I suppose they all have mortgages to pay too! LOL The youngsters in the cast are as good as the more experienced older actors. I would give the cast 5 stars, the movie only 2. February 18, 2008

Like a bad epidsode of "Desperate Housewives"

There is "black comedy", but this film is simply bad, and not very funny. The screenwriter attempts to juxtapose serious and even tragic material next to flippant scenes of suburbanites who have lost their minds in a haze that apparently represents either medication-induced obliviousness to what their children are up to, or some kind of new-age disconnect from reality. It doesn't work. The quality of the script is at the level of a mediocre sitcom. What little depth occurs is restricted to the main character, whose anguish is well played. But we can hardly develop any emotional response since his anguish is continually interrupted by trite and silly scenes, such as having his dead friend's drug stash baked into a casserole to be served to the unsuspecting neighbors who attend his memorial service, thereby causing them to become sexually uninhibited. Titter, titter. While the subject matter of kids using prescription drugs to the point of suicide and crime is certainly worthy of a script, this film caricatures suburban life so badly that it explains nothing. I am amazed that they were able to corral a respectable cast, but maybe times were hard in Hollywood. The Chumscrubber can only be described as a failure at many levels. Unfortunately, it seems to be more evidence of a trend to view extreme bizarreness as an acceptable substitute for art. January 27, 2008

Headless in Hillside

Ari Posin and Zac Stanford had met years before at a film festival in Houston. They became pals and collaborated on this film, with Zac doing most of the writing, and Ari sitting in the director's chair. One executive producer, Bonnie Curtis, had worked for years for her mentor Steven Spielberg. She took the CHUMSCRUBBER script to him, and he liked it, seeing many of the obvious plot parallels to DREAMWORKS mega-hit, AMERICAN BEAUTY (1999). He shared some comments on what he thought was a third act that seemed much too busy with a swirl of storylines. He did like the fact that CHUMSCRUBBER was very "edgy", that it pushed the edge of the envelope. When they filmed BEAUTY, they assumed that it would be completely a comedy, but it morphed into some tremendously dramatic moments. CHUMSCRUBBER had the same kind of dichotomy going for it, even though it was more surreal. Its characters, especially the teenagers could have stepped out of the script for DONNIE DARKO (2001).

CHUMSCRUBBER was the feature film debut for director Ari Posin, paralleling Sam Mendes who directed BEAUTY as his feature debut. Posin had graduated from USC a decade earlier, and this film was his first shot at the Hollywood brass ring. His father had been a film director in Russia, before the family fled the repression there and came to America. So Posin grew up in a home where the dinner conversation was centered squarely on cinema. He co-wrote the script, and he understood the necessity to cast strong actors who could meet the challenges on the page. Following Elia Kazan's advice, he tried not "to direct too much" -the cardinal sin for most first time directors.

Suburbia is the "world" of this dramedy -a sanitized new ticky-tacky housing development called "Hillside"; the place to play out this dystopian vision. Perhaps it does not play out as heartbreakingly as Gus Van Sant's ELEPHANT (2003), or as realistically, but it is teeming with middle-aged parental characters who must have watched way too much OZZIE & HARRIET, DONNA REED, and FATHER KNOWS BEST reruns. They should have paid more attention to the disturbing goings on along Wisteria Lane on DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES, or re-watched THE STEPFORD WIVES (1975), THE TRUMAN SHOW (1998), or even THX 1138 (1971).

Jamie Bell [BILLY ELLIOT (2000)] played young protagonist Dean Stiffle with a perfect pitch American accent. His "Dean" was a recognizable adolescent, but further burdened with being both an outsider and rebel, and having a father who was a New Age guru, who used his family's "dysfunctions" to write about; especially Dean's. So Dean, like most of his compeers found solace in the swirling miasma of pharmacology that was readily available at their middle class high school. Being stoned led to an easier pretense of "good behavior" which kept their parents clueless as to their actual behavior. The parents in this suburb were mostly selfish, inebriated, arrogant, and ignorant, practicing several forms of abandonment effortlessly.

Camilla Belle played Crystal, and she was as beautiful as a young Angelina Jolie in HACKERS (1995), and as stunning as the young Elizabeth Taylor in A PLACE IN THE SUN (1951). Belle played Crystal very self-aware of being the prettiest girl in school, mired in shallow selfishness and rebellion, yet nevertheless she began to show indications that she might be "growing up", that she might actually be receptive to an honest communication, logic, and tenderness. For a long time she hung out with a cruel posse of drug dealers and "rinks", girlfriend to their leader Billy (played impressively by Justin Chatwin). Billy turned out to be both bully and victim.

The supporting cast consisted of a number of talented actors, many of them brought on board secondary to the charm of the young director, and some because they liked the irreverent and necessary messages of the film. Ralph Fiennes, Glenn Close, Carrie-Ann Moss, Rita Wilson, Allison Janney, William Fichtner, Rory Culkin, John Heard, and Lauren Holly were the "dream cast". Most of the major film critics disliked the film, and felt that the cast were slumming in this "pretentious Indie" film. I disagree. I felt that for a first time feature film this fable both entertained and gave us food for thought.
November 19, 2007

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