Franz Patrick's Movie Review of The Chumscrubber

Rating of
2/4

The Chumscrubber

Too Detached
Franz Patrick - wrote on 09/28/08

I found it hard to connect with the characters because pretty much all of them are self-centered: they are either too busy with their jobs to notice events that are going on around them or they drug themselves so that they wouldn’t have to feel. I have a penchant for black comedies that comments on life in suburbia but I found this to be a little too pretentious for its own good. The “artistic” moments made me roll my eyes and the supposedly heartbreaking moments do not merit sympathy. The best moment of the film was the interaction between Jamie Bell and Glenn Close near the end because their pain was real. We got to know them more in three minutes than we did the entire picture. I think this would’ve worked better if the adults were the focus of the story, not the teenagers. I feel like the scenes with the teens are unrelatable and bland, slow and annoying. The adults, on the other hand, are pretty good, especially Allison Janney’s sad turn as the mother who turns to the fostering of her business because her family wouldn’t give her the time of day. If there were less characters, the “artistic” scenes were removed, and the writing is a bit sharper, this would’ve been another good film about the desperation and meltdown in suburbia.

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