The Chumscrubber Life's more than just a videogame in The Chumscrubber IMDB Link: The Chumscrubber

I. The Movie...

Contrary to popular belief, The Chumscrubber is not an industrial cleaning product designed to scrub away hard to remove soap chum. Rather, The Cumscrubber is the first feature film by newcomers Arie Posin and Zac Standford, who cowrote the story, with Standford completing the screenplay and Posin taking on directorial duties. The Chumscrubber was released as a Region 1 DVD in January 2006 and I bought it previously viewed from my local Rogers Video. I actually passed over The Chumscrubber when I first saw it in early February, but when a number of forum posts at the Internet Movie Database recommended this film as well as Me and You and Everyone We Know to people who liked Thumbsucker, I knew I had to get my hands on it.

The Chumscrubber features a strong satirical narrative with oddball characters that highlight a number of themes including: human isolation and loneliness; the gulfs between adults and teenagers; human selfishness and insensitivity; humanity’s inability to listen and appreciate various points of view; as well as humanity’s inability to cherish and behold the child within.

The Chumscrubber begins and ends in a surreal computer generated suburbia. The film’s title refers to a videogame that subtly surrounds and consumes the lives of the film’s youth and the videogame bookends the movie, serving as a unifying metaphor for the film itself. The game is quietly ubiquitous, sporting a plethora of tie-ins from posters to t-shirts to baseball caps and more. And of course, various youth play the game at various points throughout the movie.

In the context of the videogame, The Chumscrubber is the sole survivor of a nuclear holocaust, who now lives as a sort of modern-day headless horseman, forever destined to roam the streets of his community, protecting it from the zombie-like creatures that have risen from the ashes of the holocaust. The videogame is also closely linked to the movie’s central character, Troy, a drug dealer and the suburb’s primary supplier of the prescription drugs the youth use as a means of escape. It is his suicide that sends the ordinary world of this small suburbia into chaos and in many aspects, through his suicide Troy becomes The Chumscrubber, as the various characters grapple and deal with the significance of his death. It’s Troy’s death that propels the movie’s central storyline about a group of teens who want what’s left of Troy’s stash, and the lengths they will go to get it, which include taunting, kidnapping and extortion. The film features a number of subplots that weave throughout the film and each of them will ultimately collide and come to a resolution in the film’s climax. Filmmaker George Lucas is always pushing just how many subplots he can create and keep going in a film and here Posin and Standford readily step up to the challenge of keeping a number of suspenseful balls in the air without ever confusing their audience.

There are impressive performances all around in The Chumscrubber. Jamie Bell, perhaps best known for his portrayal of Billy in 2000’s Billy Elliot, plays Dean Stiffle, our young teenage hero caught between the suicide of Troy, his best friend, and the other youth who want Troy’s drugs. His parents, Bill and Allie Stiffle are portrayed by William Fichtner (Contact, Empire Fall and TV’s Invasion) and Allison Janney (Winter Solstice and TV’s The West Wing) play versions of Dr. Phill McGraw and Martha Stewart, each with their own set of problems, each unsure of how to communicate with each other, let alone their children and neighbours. Ralph Fiennes also stars in the film, as Mayor Michael Ebbs, who undergoes his own unique transformation, oddly enough, learning to embrace the child within and what he really wants from life from Bill Stiffle’s new book as well as from the events that occur over the arch of this film. Glenn Close, John Heard, Rita Wilson, Carrie-Anne Moss, Camilla Bell and Rory Culkin round out the cast, each playing a pivotal role in the resolution of this movie. Lou Pucci also gives a finely textured performance, one that is quite the opposite of his starring role in Thumbsucker.

The production values of the film are very good. Each set provides a unique and interesting look into the lives of each of the families involved in this story, providing this suburban setting with a sense of individuality and similarity at the same time. There is also a lot of strong imagery involved throughout the film, and many moments are revealed through looks and images such as the recurring theme of the whales, the headless horseman videogame star, as well as the similarity between the prescription drugs of the youth and the vitamin supplements of the parents. All of the sets and images exist with a central purpose of reinforcing many of the film’s themes. Overall, it’s done very well.

II. The Packaging and Menus…

The cover of The Chumscrubber features a surreal suburban background that appears pasted together. It also features a photo of Dean superimposed like a cardboard cut-out in the center of the cover, with his t-shirt tying him into the film’s featured videogame. A list of the film’s cast is presented near the top of the cover, with the film’s title appearing underneath this listing. A quote from the Los Angeles Times is next to Dean, and the movie's tagline, Meet Generation Rx, appears on the bottom.

The back cover features a simple description of the movie along with a number of photos on top of a background that is similar to the cover’s surrealistic one, only here a still from the film's climatic sequence is recreated. At the bottom of the back cover appear the movie credits as well as technical presentation information for the film. There is no information on the special features anywhere on the front or back of the Canadian case, which is unfortunate. It also wouldn’t have hurt to quote some more famous reviewers, such as Richard Roeper.

There were no liner notes inserts included with my DVD copy of The Chumscrubber, however this may have been due to the fact that I purchased a previously viewed copy of the film. However, more distributors are choosing not to include liner notes, probably to cut down on the production costs of the DVD.

Overall, the interactive menus are easy to navigate and continue the surrealistic style of the cover. However, there does not appear to be any easter-eggs (hidden features) on The Chumscrubber, at least none that I could find.

III. Technical Presentation…

The film is presented in a widescreen theatrical aspect ratio of 2.40:1 which is enhanced for widescreen televisions. Overall, the images on this DVD are sharp, crisp and clean - a pleasure to behold.

The Chumscrubber is presented in both 5.1 Dolby Digital and 2.0 Dolby Digital Surround Sound, with available captions in English, Spanish and French.

IV. Special Features & Extras…

The special features for The Chumscrubber DVD are fairly light, but are satisfying nonetheless.

The first is a filmmakers commentary with director Arie Posin and screenwriter Zac Stanford, who both created the story for The Chumscrubber. The commentary is insightful, with Posin and Stanford discussing various topics including: their motivations for making the film; how the story was shaped; casting choices; how sets and shots were designed; as well as discussing the musical choices that were made among creative aspects of the production. It's clear from the commentary that Posin and Standfor have a close history, having developed the story with no original hopes of ever selling it, but always sticking to the idea of what they would want to see in a movie. One gets the feeling that as a writing and directing team, Posin and Stanford could become the next Coen brothers.

Secondly, The Making of the Chumscrubber is a short, 12-minute inside look at the making of the film featuring interviews with the writers, producers and actors of the film. Although brief, this inside look is insightful and interesting to watch.

Third, there are also 10 deleted and extended scenes among the special features and extras for The Chumscrubber. If you play all of them back-to-back it will take about 14-minutes to watch them all. The scenes are presented on their own some with musical score and some without. And unlike the deleted scenes found on other DVDs, they do not feature any kind of commentary or discussion by the filmmakers about why they were not included in the film's final cut.

There are a number of previews for other Dreamworks movies including Red Eye and Just Like Heaven. Curiously missing however, are previews or trailers for The Chumscrubber itself.

Finally, although there is not a direct link provided on the DVD, there is an interactive Chumscrubber website at http://www.thechumscrubber.com/. The site features numerous downloads in the form of various desktop pictures and instant messenger icons; the film’s theatrical trailer; complete cast and character information; links to personal websites of cast and crew members; games and much more. The site does run on Flash, and the latest version of the Macromedia Flash player is required (and probably having high speed Internet wouldn’t hurt either). Overall, it’s curious why many of the website features (such as cast and crew information, the theatrical trailer and games) weren’t available on the DVD and it’s also curious why a direct link to this site wasn’t made available anywhere on the DVD itself, especially when the site is copyrighted 2005 and this particular DVD came out in 2006 (again, it is possible information about this site was included in liner notes that I simply did not get with my previously viewed copy of this movie).

V. Film Rating…

The Chumscrubber is rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America (http://www.filmratings.com/), for language, violent content, drug material and some sexuality. The Canadian Home Video Rating (http://www.filmratings.ca/) is 14A.

VI. Conclusions…

The Chumscrubber is an engrossing film with a strong story that presents the dangers of failing to communicate on even the most basic levels with the ones we love.

Grade for the Feature Film: A-
Grade for the DVD Presentation & Extras: B

(c) March 10, 2006, Steven H. Lee

This review is also posted on Epinions.com and on Mouthshut.com.