Thumbsucker

When I saw this movie in the video store I had never heard of it, which surprised me considering it had a cast that was not necessarily to be scoffed at: Vincent D'onofrio (Law and Order CI's Det. Goren, Full Metal Jacket's Pile), Tilda Swinton (The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe's White Witch), Benjamin Bratt (One bad movie after another), Kelli Garner (Dreamland's Calista), Keanu Reeves (more on this bastard later), Vince Vaughn (if you don't know who he is by now you shouldn't even be reading a movie review), and the unknown but amazingly talented Lou Taylor Pucci (who you don't know, but you will).

Now, the casting was a bit off in two respects: Keanu Reeves should be dead. He shouldn't be making movies, and he certainly shouldn't be in a movie so real, funny and poignant that it makes Crash look like a pile of horse crap (granted that isn't very hard for me to say since I wasn't all that fond of Crash). Every nuance of this movie is real, except everything that Keanu Reeves says and does. I honestly expected that at any moment he would bust out and say, "Dude! Most righteous!" and then do air guitar. Honestly. He was that bad. Now, I loved Devil’s Advocate, and Speed and I could absolutely die with happiness when watching Bram Stoker‘s Dracula, but this man can’t act and this movie might as well have had a big flashing Las Vegas size sign pointing at him and blinking “Sucks! Sucks! Sucks!”. End of story. Just take my word for it.

Next is Vince Vaughn. His part was unfunny and totally wienerish. Is wienerish a word? My spell checker says its not, but I defy thee! Vince Vaughn should have had Keanu Reeves part. It may not have been funny, but he wouldn’t have had to act like a wiener. Still, I’m glad he was there. I didn’t like him in Psycho, but he saved Wedding Crashers, and lets face it people, its tough to save anything that Owen Wilson is going south in. (PS If Owen Wilson is reading this I still totally love you and will always love you because you played Eli Cash in the Royal Tenenbaums, one of my favorite movies of all time. Didn’t you help write that too? Jebus! Thank you). Moving on.

When I started watching Thumbsucker, I thought it was going to be so quirky and ridiculous that in the end I would wonder what in the hell I had just watched and what the hell had the damn point been anyway? But if nothing else I feel like I can trust Vincent D’onofrio’s judgment (I even like The Cell. Stop laughing.) So watch I did and I realized that this movie didn’t just delve into the heart and life of a teenage boy (Justin Cobb, played by Lou Pucci) to whom thumb sucking had been an addiction his entire life. No. Get this: it covers drug addiction (both behavioral drugs as well as street drugs), married life in all that it is and seems to be, the alpha male family dynamic, sex and that life is everything and nothing you expect all at once. The movie I was watching was a picture of that same thought: everything and nothing I expected. It managed to cover all these topics in a way that Hollywood has forgotten completely: without utter alarm and panic. Imagine that, if you can.

D’onofrio and Swinton play the parents, who are in a strange mishmash of a marriage, and both play their roles so naturally that you are so happy when their place in Lou’s story goes from dangling subplot to front stage, because you just want to watch them work. Its that good. Kelli Garner plays Justin’s “girlfriend” Rebecca, who comes and goes in the story but is so deliciously sensual and aloof you want to bite a hole through your lip. And lastly, but people he ain’t the least, is Lou Pucci who plays Justin.

Horrified by his addiction to sucking his thumb; which makes his father disgusted with him, is only one more thing for his mother to just roll over and ignore about him and that leads him in the most stressful situations to the bathroom stall to partake in, he decides to part ways with his habit which turns not into a silly journey through a pathetic excuse for withdrawals, but which leads you through the many ins and outs of his life, his school, his family, his future. Can he quit? Should he have to? What is it about being a thumb sucker that marks him in the way he has marked even himself? But what its really about is the world and the people in it, and our perception of them, ourselves and the events and places that make up our lives. NO ONE could have played this role like Lou Pucci. He is the next Leonardo Dicaprio and I don’t mean that in a bad way. I mean that he’s handsome, and breathtakingly talented. I ate up every word he spoke. If Lou Pucci kicked me in the boob, I’d ask for another. Write that down somewhere, I want you to remember that I said it. Johnny Depp? Orlando Bloom? Lou Pucci. Just watch.

Joon gives Thumbsucker the Joon rating of Awesome. That means watch it. Or someday when you’re watching Lou Pucci on Inside the Actor’s Studio you’ll be thinking “You know, I really should see that movie. They say it was his springboard!”. It’ll be like DiCaprio’s What’s Eating Gilbert Grape. It’ll be Johnny’s 21 Jumpstreet. It’ll be Basic Instinct for Sharon Stone and The Mask for Cameron Diaz. Only you’ll want to watch it.