The Chumscrubber

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The Chumscrubber

Directed by	Arie Posin
Produced by	Lawrence Bender Bonnie Curtis
Written by	Arie Posin Zac Stanford
Starring	Glenn Close Ralph Fiennes Caroline Goodall Lauren Holly Allison Janney Carrie-Anne Moss Rita Wilson Jamie Bell Camilla Belle Justin Chatwin Rory Culkin Thomas Curtis Lou Taylor Pucci
Music by	James Horner
Distributed by	Go Fish Pictures (US)
Release date(s)	2005 August 26
Running time	108 min
Language	English
Budget	$ 6,800,000 (est.)
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The Chumscrubber is a 2005 dark comedy film directed by Arie Posin and written by Posin and Zac Stanford. It stars Jamie Bell, Glenn Close, Ralph Fiennes, Caroline Goodall, Lauren Holly, Allison Janney, Carrie-Anne Moss, Rita Wilson, Camilla Belle, Justin Chatwin, Rory Culkin, Thomas Curtis, and Lou Taylor Pucci. The film focuses on the lack of communication between teenagers and their parents, and the prevalence of prescription drugs in American society. The title of the film refers to a popular video game omnipresent in the teenagers' lives, in which a post-apocalyptic hero carries his severed head in his hand as he fights the forces of evil.

The high school scenes were filmed on location in the Santa Clarita, California junior high middle school, with special effects work completed in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.

The film won the Audience Award for best film in Main Competition at the Moscow Film Festival.

[edit] Plot

Tagline: Meet Generation Rx

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Jamie Bell stars as Dean Stiffle, a teenager whose father (Fichtner) is a self-help "Doctor Feelgood" guru and whose mother (Janney) is a proponent of a new lifestyle involving vitamins. Dean's best friend, Troy, the local high school drug dealer, commits suicide, owing Billy (Chatwin) a large amount of pills. Billy decides that Dean, who lives next door to Troy's mother (Close), is the best person to get the pills from wherever Troy hid them, so he decides to kidnap Dean's younger brother (Culkin), Charlie, to force him to get them for him. Instead, he kidnaps the wrong Charlie—the son of a local policeman (Heard) and the town's mayor's (Fiennes) fiancée (Wilson).

This movie is a criticism of modern suburban life in America and its effect on the family structure. Strong emphasis is placed on social alienation and artificial happiness, usually achieved through medication. Each character is alone in his world and strains to present an "everything is alright" front through intimidation, passive-aggressive behaviour, or, in most cases, being oblivious to anyone's world but their own.

The movie combines the classical dramatic traditions of tragedy and comedy, ending with both a funeral and a wedding. Everyone's callousness towards each event (wedding guests are there for social or business reasons, not to celebrate the joy of the union, and funeral goers are not mourning but are instead whipped into a drug-induced frenzy) invites the viewer to reevaluate the notion of tragedy and comedy.

The actual title itself refers to a video game character featured in the story. He is a decapitated street hero who fights the mutated remainants of his destroyed city. His head being severed is perhaps a metaphor for the indifference and lack of emotion that is shown by the youth in this story. His head represents feelings and emotions. So his head becoming seperate from his body is symbolizing the way the teens in this story try to rid themselves of their emotions by taking drugs. For example, Dean is afraid to cope with the loss of his friend, so he instead pretends that they were never really friends, thereby making it seem like it was less traumatic.