Despite its brilliant casting, Thumbsucker doesn't gratify.
***image1*** Don't be surprised if, after sitting through
Thumbsucker
, you find yourself with an inexplicable craving to eat cookie dough straight out of the package, nibble on your split ends or light up when you haven't had a cigarette in decades; despite an eye-poppingly gifted cast, a fairly competent screenplay and spare, frequently lovely cinematography, there's something oddly lacking in the sum of these parts.
Seventeen-year-old Justin (newcomer Lou Pucci, who's wisely chosen a role from which he can go where he pleases in years to come, anywhere from Johnny Depp to John Malkovich) has a social problem, and you can probably guess from the title that it's not unsightly acne. No, he's still addicted to his ***image2***thumb, even though he genuinely wishes he could quit-as do his father (Vincent D'Onofrio, profoundly convincing as the injured football hero resigned to midlife as a sporting-goods manager) and mother (Tilda Swinton, who just seems to get more incredible with every film-and who really has a weird resemblance to Pucci). Mercifully, Justin's orthodontist comes to the rescue (Keanu Reeves, sending himself up for the first time since
Bill and Ted
, who gets to wear a mala and intone things like, "Call on your power animal"). His unorthodox hypnosis treatment sets Justin on a new path, as does a diagnosis of ADHD by the school counselor and some nifty psychotropic meds. We can tell right away that Justin feels better because he starts wearing a necktie; sure enough, his self-confidence blooms and he catapults into success as new captain of the debate team, applying to NYU and even angling to make whoopie with the nubile Rebecca (Garner)-all to the trendy, vague wistfulness of the Polyphonic Spree and the late Elliott Smith. Yet debate coach Vince Vaughn (another sharp bit of casting) seems to find his apt pupil's new assertiveness increasingly obnoxious; Justin suspects his mom's new job as a drug rehab nurse is a cover for her affair with a sleazy TV actor (a scene-stealing Benjamin Bratt); and suddenly he really does seem to be taking an awful lot of those little pills….
Mills makes some changes to Kirn's novel (e.g., eliminating its Mormon setting); but like the direction,
Thumbsucker
's script remains just a shade too muted. It's obvious that Mills is deliberately aligning his freshman outing with other disaffected comings-of-age, from
The Graduate
and
Harold and Maude
to Wes Anderson films like
Rushmore
or the numb lithium limpidity of
Garden State
. Yet while similarly dappled with well-captured Proustian spots of time, overall there's something uncompelling and listless about its plights, and
Thumbsucker
eventually settles for being decorative rather than purposeful.
