Thumbsucker

First off, Thumbsucker is (in my opinion) an awful yet intriguing name for a film. It has been in my Netflix queue for about a year, but every time it came up as the next film to be sent out to me, I would think to myself "I really don't feel like watching a movie called Thumbsucker" and I would then replace it with another movie with a better name. However, in the end it was the title that made me watch it. I guess I was just in a thumbsucking kind of mood. Before I say anything else, I'd like to point out that Keanu Reeves has a certain knack for picking roles that work for him. I think he realizes that he doesn't have the talents of somebody like Sean Penn (although I do have my issues with him, too), so Reeves carefully chooses roles that he thinks he he can pull of well. He did it in this film, and he plays a hippie orthodontist very well. Lou Pucci is the standout actor in the movie, playing a 17-year-old who still sucks his thumb. The rest of the film shows how this affects his life, and how trying to stop affects it even more. My biggest problem with the film is that it falls victim to the Sundance syndrome. By that I mean that it is yet another movie about how hard it is to grow up. However I do commend Thumbsucker for showing that parents have as hard a time growing up as their children do. Vince Vaugn, the debate teacher, has a surprisingly fleshed-out role, showing the subtle desperation in loneliness. In the end, though, I feel that Thumbsucker's biggest pitfall is that it is less than the sum of its parts.

Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_swH4fv1Io