Thumbsucker
Pretty unremarkable but still entertaining-at-times coming-of-age indie-flick about an underachieving but soulful kid addicted to sucking his thumb who gets diagnosed with A.D.D. and put on drugs which transform him into an articulate, energetic and competitive debater addicted now to winning and drugs instead of his obviously less-harmful thumb.
People who think this is a profound and moving film are probably be the same people who thought Garden State was absolute genius. I'm not one of those people. Like State , the main character here is sleeping through his life, numb to reality, and Thumbsucker too feels like a forced rumination on suburban life, teenage rites-of-passage and the family unit, a film wearing its proudly quirky characters very much on its sleeve, characters performed with understated poignancy by some great actors - and also Keanu Reeves.
Reeves is actually one of the highlights here as a hippie dentist quick to dispense advice but who is just as confused about who he is as the thumbsucker himself, and Vince Vaughn is also a surprise as he turns his usual shtick down several notches in his role as the debate teacher, while Lou Pucci as the thumbsucker has the perfect mix of naiveness and intensity.
The music by the late Elliott Smith and Polyphonic Spree augments the whimsy and melancholy feel the director was obviously going for, but Thumbsucker still feels all too ambling and strained an effort, a film trying desperately to fit into the independent niche of quirky films about disaffected youth searching for meaning. I can see why so many teens and twenty-somethings latch onto these films when there is such a void of other intelligent fare for young people about young people, but it's a genre that is yet to excite or engage me.