BEFORE: Ralph Fiennes carries over again from "The Constant Gardener". I'm going to try to knock this one out tonight so it posts as a Saturday film, not a Sunday film, because I'm holding that space for what I think is a good Mother's Day film. And if that one's not very appropriate, I've got two more scheduled to follow it that could serve. I'll hit that theme one way or another.
THE PLOT: A darkly satiric story about life crumbing in the midst of a seemingly idyllic suburbia.
AFTER: Well, if worse comes to worst, I'm not saying this is the best Mother's Day film, but at least it serves as an OK lead-in and keeps the theme going. There's stuff here in this film set in a non-specific suburban town about teens being alienated from their parents, or maybe it's vice versa, so there are plenty of awkward moments between sons and mothers, or a daughter and her mother, and that's enough to work with for now. At least twice in the film, though, a mother character has no idea where her son is or what he's up to, which is not a promising sign. In one case the mother assumes that her son is home, just being quiet or moody, when in fact he's been kidnapped. And closer to the opening of the film, a mother is hosting a party with no idea that her son has committed suicide in the guest house (pool house?). I mean, there's something to be said for giving your teenager some space, but you still should probably check in on him from time to time. Any teen might figure out how to move some furniture in front of the door when he wants some privacy, that's what I did, but I wasn't prone to suicide as a teen, thankfully.
It's this suicide that sets a chain of events in motion - the teen was the school drug dealer, and two other teens want to take over his clients, so they need his stash to do that. They try to get it from Troy's friend Dean, the lead character here, and when he won't hand it over, they try to kidnap his younger brother, Charlie. The only problem is, they kidnap another kid named Charlie (that's the kid whose mother doesn't even notice he's missing, for like, two or three days) who lives on Dean's block, so Dean has to try to get him freed from the bullies, without doing anything too illegal or immoral.
There are complications, of course. Dean has to deal with his own parents, his mother sells vitamins in some kind of multi-level marketing scheme, and his father is a psychiatrist/author who's either trying to analyze Dean, put him on pills (since his only friend just committed suicide) or get his opinion on the promotions for his new book. It's funny, the adults are always trying to get their kids to focus, but all through the film, it seems to be the adults who can't focus or pay attention. Again, these parents who want to have it all - careers, solid relationships, the big suburban house, plus hobbies like gardening and entertaining - barely pay attention to their own kids, and don't notice when they aren't even there.
Dean also has some attraction to Crystal, who hangs with the bullies/kidnappers but also acts as his go-between so he can track their movements and make a deal to trade Troy's drugs for his non-brother, Charlie from down the street. Why Dean just doesn't alert the authorities is a very askable question, though it's not explicitly stated he either feels some guilt related to Troy's suicide, or he fears that turning the kidnappers in will expose him for dealing drugs with Troy? Or maybe he just wants to maintain that connection with Crystal, and this is the only way to do it. It's all pretty unclear, if I'm being honest.
The kidnapped Charlie is the son of divorced parents, his father is a police officer and his mother is an interior designer who's about to marry the town's mayor. The wedding is coming up in a couple of days, but there's a conflict with the memorial service for Troy, and Dean's parents have to decide which one to attend. Once Dean gets in trouble for fighting with the kidnappers, and figures out that the policeman who arrests him is the father of the kidnapped kid, you might very well ask WHY he doesn't tell the officer that his kid is in danger - another perfectly valid question with no real answer.
The biggest problem of all, though, is that Dean has been taking the pills prescribed by his father, and is going slightly mad as a result. (Again, remember this is National Mental Health Month.). Dean starts to have visions of his friend Troy who hung himself, and has conversations with him. So perhaps this partially explains why he doesn't do the sensible thing and turn in the kidnappers when he has a chance? But it's more like the film wants us to believe that everything happens for a reason, and that there's going to be some grand convergence on the day of the wedding/memorial service/ransoming of the kidnapped kid. Dean's dad wrote a book called "Happy Accidents" and it suggests that there is no coincidence, just magic if we look at how everything is connected and worked together to bring us to the exact moment in time where we are now.
And yeah, there's a point where everything sort of works itself out, but is that really some grand design, or just a bunch of stuff that happened? The biggest proponent of the "happy accident" theory is the town mayor, and he hasn't been right since that head injury. Plus, everyone else in town is self-medicating in their own way, the adults with alcohol and prescription pills, and the kids with either Ritalin or party drugs. What the heck happened to the "Just say no" era of drug prevention? How can we promote sobriety while simultaneously giving our teens drugs to increase their attention spans? When did "Don't do drugs" turn into "Just don't do the FUN drugs"?
Look, I've been around, watched a ton of movies - watched a ton of STRANGE movies, and this is a strange movie. The film it reminds me the most of is "Donnie Darko", another film where a teen had hallucinations (not a dead friend, but a scary giant rabbit) and that film came out in 2001. This one followed just a few years later, so the timeline seems about right - this movie wanted so badly to be "Donnie Darko", only without the scares and without having a real point or point of view.
And the whole thing with the video-game character (that's the "Chumscrubber" of the title), that goes exactly nowhere. In the video-game a man wakes up without his head on his body, and he's in some kind of zombie-apocalypse world that looks an awful lot like the suburban housing development that the movie's characters live in. But so what? What does that even mean? The guy walks around holding his own head, but this feels very disconnected from the main storyline, it provides no insight or symbolism connected to the kidnapping plot. Maybe Dean on medication feels a little out of sorts, like a guy holding his own disconnected head, in a world of other zombie-fied teens, but that seems like a bit of a stretch.
What do the dolphins mean? What's up with all the clocks that Lee has? Why don't we ever see any teens attending class? Too many questions with very few answers. If you're a fan of any of these actors (I like William Fichtner, for example) they'll probably appeal to you here, but the other ones, man, they're just phoning it in and getting a paycheck.
Also starring Jamie Bell (last seen in "Rocketman"), Camilla Belle (last seen in "Practical Magic"), Justin Chatwin (last seen in "Taking Lives"), Lou Taylor Pucci (last seen in "Beginners"), Rory Culkin (last seen in "You Can Count on Me"), Thomas Curtis (last seen in "North Country"), Glenn Close (last seen in "What Happened to Monday"), William Fichtner (last seen in "Seal Team Six: The Raid on Osama Bin Laden"), John Heard (last seen in "Runner Runner"), Jason Isaacs (last seen in "The Death of Stalin"), Allison Janney (last seen in "Bombshell"), Josh Janowicz, Carrie-Anne Moss (last seen in "The Crew"), Rita Wilson (last seen in "Always at the Carlyle"), Lauren Holly (last seen in "What Women Want"), Tim DeKay, Caroline Goodall (last seen in "My Life in Ruins").
RATING: 3 out of 10 casserole dishes
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