24/08/2007
The Chumscrubber
Exposing the murky underbelly of suburban America is hardly an original concept for a movie, but the impressive cast of ‘The Chumscrubber’ promised at least an intelligent and substantial variation on this hackneyed theme. Despite some good performances however, Ralph Fiennes, Jamie Bell et al could not stop this creaky great juggernaut from thundering over the welltrodden path to its inevitably boring conclusion. A botched kidnapping by some drug-hungry teenagers goes too far, whilst the parents of all involved remain oblivious, so wrapped up are they in their nauseatingly suburban lives. Mayhem is wreaked, lessons are learned, order is restored. Yawn. The name ‘Chumscrubber,’ if you’re wondering, refers to the lame computer graphic of a headless boy that pervades the movie. It appears on posters, comic books, and most frequently in a computer game, where the words ‘I am the Chumscrubber’ are repeated in a supposedly terrifying wheezy techno voice. The somewhat surreal presence of the Chumscrubber is reminiscent of the rabbit in Donnie Darko – a much better film, incidentally, of this genre. The Chumscrubber embodies the social diseases that riddle this particular suburban community, but for me it embodies all that is wrong with the movie: it is superficial, derivative, and has been and will be done better elsewhere.
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