Digital Effects
Sly 'Thumbsucker' ponders addiction, guilt, and identity

It's tough to get through this life without some sort of emotional support. We all have our methods for dealing with the life's curve balls, but few are as embarrassing as the emotional crutch that props up the young protagonist of Thumbsucker—a 17-year-old boy who still sucks his thumb. From this jumping-off point, filmmaker Mike Mills, in his feature directing debut, concocts a clever, appealing deadpan comedy of teen angst, addiction, and family dynamics.

Adapting the novel by Walter Kirn, Mills locates the story in an anonymous suburbia of ranch-style houses and middle-class comfort. High school senior Justin (Lou Taylor Pucci) just can't quite give up his childhood thumbsucking habit, a Zen-like comfort device which he confines to the privacy of his own bedroom or, in stressful moments, a closed stall in the school bathroom.

His mom, Audrey (Tilda Swinton), a nurse, is sympathetic, although she's more concerned with trying to win a date with her favorite TV actor in a contest on a cereal box. But Justin's father, Mike (Vincent D'Onofrio), is another story. A onetime college football star whose career was wrecked by a knee injury, and who now runs a sporting goods store, Mike has issues of his own; for one thing, he insists Justin call his parents by their first names, because "Mom" and "Dad" make Mike feel too old. Mike is disturbed by his son's proclivity, and liable to bust into Justin's room late at night or in the morning to see if he's still doing it.

Justin is as ashamed of his nasty habit as if he'd been caught abusing himself. (Indeed, his thumbsucking is the film's metaphor for all our private, relatively harmless so-called "sins"that make us feel abnormal.) Guilt prevents Justin from getting too close to the pretty girl on his debating team on whom he has a crush (Kelli Garner), while his debating coach (Vince Vaughn) tells Justin he "needs the confidence to have an opinion."

The wild card in the movie is Justin's shamanistic orthodontist, Perry (a very funny Keanu Reeves), whose office is adorned with tribal masks and spirit animal paintings. Perry takes a holistic approach to life ("Some dumb babysitter holds your mouth shut so she can watch her soap operas, and 40 years later, you wonder why you can't stay married," he opines, apropos of not much). Would-be mentor Perry hypnotizes Justin out of his habit; but separated from the coping device of his thumb, Justin's life actually gets worse. Nearly catatonic in class, and disruptive in public, he's dispatched to the principal—who blandly diagnoses him with ADD in about two minutes, and sends him off with a percription for Ritalin.

Thus begins Justin's serio-comic jouney through the many faces of modern addiction. Eager to "change," he talks his dubious parents into letting him take his meds, and becomes a champion debater (in a rise so meteoric, he can only crash and burn in the end). Drugs, the adrenalin rush of success, dope-smoking, and sex, are among the various highs he must work through to find his true self. Meanwhile, ex-gridiron star Mike is addicted to winning, while nurse Audrey pursues her fantasy all the way to a rehab center for burnout celebrities, where she finally connects with the TV hunk of her dreams (a cameo by Benjamin Bratt)—although not quite in the way anyone expects.

Thumbsucker is a spoof of human foibles in all their messy disarray, as the characters struggle with who they are. Nobody has any foolproof answers; the debating team subplot keeps reminding us there are two sides to every question, every situation, and every assumed solution. (One of the coach's favoroite exercises for his debate squad members is to have a student present a position, then switch in midstream to a rebuttal of that same position with equally fluent persuasion.)

The script is smart and thoughtful (although veteran music video-director Mills relies overmuch on pop song interludes featuring The Polyphonic Spree). But Pucci gives Justin an engaging, life-sized credibility. His Candide-like optimism, vulnerability and yearning to be "normal" propel the story, and speak to anyone who's ever felt like an alien in his own life.

THUMBSUCKER With Lou Pucci, Tilda Swinton, Vincent D'Onofrio, and Keanu Reeves. Written and directed by Mike Mills. From the novel by Walter Kirn. A Sony Classics release. Rated R. 96 minutes. (***)
Review published in Good Times, Oct. 6, 2005