September 17, 2005

MOVIES: Thumbsucker (Mike Mills, 2005)

Tilda Swinton, Vincent D'Onofrio, Keanu Reeves, Vince Vaughn, Benjamin Bratt -- these are good actors, and they all do good work here. (I know, some of you are snickering at the inclusion of Reeves in such company, but he's perfectly cast, and his scenes are among the movie's funniest.)

But the story is yet another Quirky Indie about a disaffected, aimless 17-year-old, and there's nothing fresh or distinctive about it, nothing to distinguish it from the dozen other such movies we get every year. The whole movie is an exercise in been-there-done-that, and it's not helped by Mills' choice to score the movie with songs by the Polyphonic Spree, whose twee orchestral-choral shtick has gone from hip to cliched faster than any band in recent memory.

At best, you should wait for this one to pop up on cable.

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