The Chumscrubber

Yet another in a long line this year of independent films that can't seem to move beyond the term interesting. It's a suburband teenage drama that smells blatantly of Donnie Darko and American Beauty with an Altman-esque weaving of an ensemble all-star cast. The fact that it never manages to elevate itself to the place that it wants to be (and probably should be considering all of the talent involved) is disappointing. However, along with his performance in last year's Undertow, and now this, Jamie Bell is quickly becoming one of my favorite young actors around. He's good, and so is most of the cast, in fact, but they don't have much to work from except for some amusing and broadly drawn stereotypes of suburban America. There's drugs, weddings, kidnappings, vitamins, suicide, and a video game, but it all can't save the film.