FilmBlather.com

"Some dumb babysitter holds your mouth shut so she can watch her soap operas in peace, and at 40 you wonder why you can't stay married."

Thumbsucker has something to say about a society that overmedicates its children and the dangers of quick fix solutions to life's problems, but I just love the characters. Though it's a substantial film in many ways, and could stand considerable scrutiny and analysis, I found myself getting lost in these people, despite all of the screenplay's stylized exaggerations and frequent bouts of absurdity. The cast renders the silly human, and the script is sad, and funny, and real without being real.

Walter Kirn's novel, which writer-director Mike Mills adapted faithfully, is one of my favorite coming-of-age works. When I read it, I was roughly the same age as the protagonist, who was a walking store of teenage hang-ups, and I took to him more than I usually do to characters in these sort of stories: he was smart, he didn't whine, and he generally seemed to have the right idea in that he had absolutely no idea what he was doing. The kid had more issues than I did by a long shot, but I could identify.

In the novel, Justin Cobb was a troubled kid, for sure; the movie, if anything, normalizes him. As played by Lou Pucci (Personal Velocity), he's mostly just an affable personality -- he lashes out sometimes, and then there's the whole thumbsucking thing, but he seems generally intelligent, laid-back, and understandably confused. When he starts taking Ritalin and becomes the star debater for the somewhat creepy English teacher (Vince Vaughn), it's like a superhero movie with the nerdy kid discovering new and fantastic powers, though this time the powers never transcend the nerdy realm. But it's enough: he becomes drunk with power, amazed and delighted that he can finally assert his dominion over something, harness a skill he's always had but could never quite find. "In my professional opinion, you've become a monster," his teacher tells him.

There's tumult in the lives of his family, too, and in their own ways they're just as appealing as Justin. Even the dad, played by the generally underrated Vincent D'Onofrio, despite threatening to become the typical movie neglectful father that never goes to his kids' recitals/sporting events/debate meets, is played as a good guy with issues of his own. He and Justin share a few genuinely touching scenes late in the film, as they find an entrance into each other's lives almost by accident. It would have been easy for film to make the father always wrong, but when Justin is first pitched Ritalin as the solution to all of his problems, he's the first to suggest that maybe it can't be that simple.

The mom, whom Justin calls Audrey (the dad's "Mike"), is an enigma; she's taken a job at a rehab clinic for high-profile celebrities, and may or may not have an obsession with the star of a cheesy cop show (Benjamin Bratt) notorious for his drug problems. It's clear that something's going on (or is it?) but Tilda Swinton's performance makes Audrey into a mother to Justin before anything else, and her concern for him is real. Once in a while, we get a glimpse of Justin's somewhat precocious little brother, and much like with the father, the two of them have a third-act scene that is almost heartbreaking.

Thumbsucker is far from a slice of life, and in the end there's a definite feeling of construction. But despite this, the film is not tidy: it gives no answers aside from intimating that there may not be any, and the main character's redemption is almost incidental. The ending does not involve a high school prom, and Justin's romantic entanglements are distinctly the beginning and not the end-all. And I would nominate Thumbsucker as having the best final shot of the year to date.

--Eugene Novikov