Having grown up in a 1960's suburb outside of Philadelphia with it's same-same split-levels and colonials, I can grasp the loneliness angle of a teen-angst film. Not as successful or lighthearted as Thumbsucker or honered as the silly and "way" overrated American Beauty, The Chumscrubber has charm. Teens are lonely. They do tend to rebel like James Dean. Their parents work hard and acquire materialistic items such as homes, patio pools, and furniture, a stage of their life that emphasizes materialism and social status. Suburbanites play hard and work hard, but teenager offspring are neither adults nor children. The Chumscrubber world wheels in turn, humor and darkness.
Jamie Bell somehow subdues his Scottish accent and plays the American teen with solemn seriousness. Maybe that's a fault in his portrayal, but after all, there is not much fun in popping pills and having a best friend hang himself. The parents, the kids, they seem to be whirling in separate orbits, coming close as the moon is large in a winter sky, but then the luminous returns to a distant trajectory. They talk to each other, or rather past each other. 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 mother planning a wedding is oblivious. She is the prototype suburban striver. Where's your kid? Oh, he's in his room, er.. out with friends on a school project. "It's for school" is teen code for "perfectly innocent." That's a laugh.
In the end, the world of white, middle to upper-class citizen is almost too easy to satire, but what's the alternative, a Stalinist State? Think about it.
Jamie Bell somehow subdues his Scottish accent and plays the American teen with solemn seriousness. Maybe that's a fault in his portrayal, but after all, there is not much fun in popping pills and having a best friend hang himself. The parents, the kids, they seem to be whirling in separate orbits, coming close as the moon is large in a winter sky, but then the luminous returns to a distant trajectory. They talk to each other, or rather past each other. 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 mother planning a wedding is oblivious. She is the prototype suburban striver. Where's your kid? Oh, he's in his room, er.. out with friends on a school project. "It's for school" is teen code for "perfectly innocent." That's a laugh.
In the end, the world of white, middle to upper-class citizen is almost too easy to satire, but what's the alternative, a Stalinist State? Think about it.