Looks like this post got a little delayed, solely due to my laziness as I watched this almost a week ago. With that said, my memory sucks and even with my notes I'm not sure how great I'll be able to recap this.
With that said, on with my post about "Thumbsucker."
Well, it's been a good, long time since I watched a "new to me" Keanu movie that I've actually enjoyed. In fact, as I go through all of my previous movies, there are only TWO movies that were new to me that I've actually liked - "Permanent Record" and "The Night Before", the latter of which wasn't even particularly good, just better than expected. Given that I've watched 25 new movies so far, enjoying only two of them to this point is not a great ratio.
So I can say that I am very pleasantly surprised that I've finally watched a "new to me" Keanu movie that I have actually liked, hooray!
"Thumbsucker" is actually a movie I've been meaning to watch for the last fifteen years and simply forgot about. I went through a phase in the mid 00's where I was almost exclusively watching small independent and foreign films (to varying degrees of quality), sometimes loving them (as was the case with movies such as "City of God," "Dirty Pretty Things," "Monster," "A History of Violence," and many more), hating them (as was the case with "Elephant," "Broken Flowers," and "Palindromes"), or just not understanding them ("The Squid and the Whale" jumps to mind).
"Thumbsucker" fits right in with a lot of these movies as a coming of age movie about a senior in high school named Justin, learning to cope with the difficulties of becoming an adult while also giving up his attachment to his thumb.
Delicious!
There really is nothing particularly unique about the movie as far as coming of age tales go, but there are a number of really outstanding performances by a handful of performers including Tilda Swinton, Vince D'Onofrio, Vince Vaughn, and yes, Keanu Reeves as a hippy dentist who believes in hypnosis and spirit animals.
The fact that Keanu Reeves made a quarter of a billion dollars starring in the Matrix trilogy is exactly the reason I think actors such as him are able to take medium sized roles in low-budget indie movies like this, so good for him (even if Revolutions and Reloaded were garbage)!
As a very quick synopsis (as always, complete spoilers ahead) -
Justin is a senior in high school with an affinity for sucking his thumb. He's struggling in school a little bit and is on the debate team if only to try to hook up with a girl in the debate class. His parents are present but not especially supportive - his mother, played excellently here by Tilda Swinton, is a nurse who is obsessed with winning a contest where she would be able to meet television star Matt Schramm (played by Benjamin Bratt) and his father, played here by Vince D'Onofrio, is a bit of an asshole who has never gotten over an injury that ruined his chances at playing football professionally and is stuck living in the past.
Early into the school year, Justin pays a trip to his dentist, played here by Keanu Reeves. Keanu is not your run-of-the-mill dentist though, he's carries a strong hippy, spiritual vibe and convinces Justin to be hypnotized in order to stop his thumbsucking habit, and wouldn't you know, it works!
Tell me about your spirit animal!
Eventually, Justin is diagnosed with ADHD and prescribed Ritalin to treat it.
I've never been on Ritalin, but in the context of this movie, it's basically a superdrug that completely changes Justin for the better. He immediately becomes a star student and basically the best debater in the history of high school debate. It's slightly unbelievable but it works in the context of the movie. Unfortunately, this all starts to get in Justin's head a bit too much and in the words of his debate teacher (played by Vince Vaughn), "It's in my professional opinion that you've become a monster," in what was a legitimately laugh out loud moment.
Justin eventually stops taking Ritalin, hooks up with his debate class crush (who in turn crushes his feelings when he attempts to make her his girlfriend), is told by Dr. Keanu that nothing is inherently wrong with sucking his thumb, starts smoking weed and is eventually accepted into NYU.
The movie is charming in a lot of ways and while it's certainly not the best "coming of age" movie I've ever seen, it was a thoroughly enjoyable 100 minutes. And while the movie really is about Justin, it's also about the adults in his life, namely his parents but also his debate coach and his dentist to a degree.
My only real complaint, as I've tended to have as I watch things these days, is the constantly shifting tone throughout the movie. The movie is certainly a dramedy with more emphasis on the drama and less on the comedy, but there are parts where it drifts too far to one side or the other.
As I mentioned, there are a lot of really good performances throughout, but the casting decision to put both Vince Vaughn and Vince D'Onofrio in the same movie is a little weird considering they are essentially the same archetype actor who also happen to have the same first name. I'm just glad they perfectly cast Keanu Reeves as the hippy dentist and not someone like Mark Ruffalo or Jon Favreau or else the whole thing would have been super confusing.
A lot of various side thoughts on this one -
*While Justin is a bit of an iconoclast, at least he's far less difficult to deal with than one of Tilda Swinton's other on-screen children:
Justin > Kevin
*Second movie in this project so far to feature Vince D'Onofrio, who I am starting to hate less.
*I'm not entirely clear on this movie's stance on Ritalin. On the one hand, it basically turns Justin into a superstar student who is able to talk his way into the journalism school at NYU. On the other hand, it also turns him into a bit of an asshole.
*An interesting subplot has Tilda Swinton starting a job at a celebrity rehab center, and her family really has no respect for patient confidentiality as they hound her about who is in there. Some of their guesses, amusingly, include Matthew Perry and Whitney Houston (RIP) because this movie came out in 2005.
Don't do crack
*Literally impossible to watch Vince Vaughn as a debate coach without thinking of this:
*I'd probably have more to say had I not waited nearly a week to write this post, but nobody is reading this anyway so whatever.
Box Office Information: $1.3 Million Domestic (~$2 Million inflation adjusted)/ $600,00 International for $2 Million worldwide on a $4 Million dollar budget. This movie was really never intended for wide release and it still always surprised me a little bit when a movie with such a small budget is able to cast a handful of A and B list actors.
Rotten Tomatoes: 71% Critic/71% Audience - these numbers look about in line with what I'd expect. Like I said, it's a good movie but it's not a great movie.
IMDB: 6.6
My Movie Rating: 7/10 - very enjoyable, there are worse ways than spending an hour and a half, like watching several other movies I've watched so far for example.
Keanu Rating: 9/10 - His screen time is relatively limited in this one but he plays his part almost perfectly.
Up Next: It's "Constantine," another movie I've never seen and am cautiously optimistic about.
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