The Reel Critic

Author: GABE BROUGHTON

Graphic artist Mike Mills' directorial debut is your classic late-summer coming of age story - sad, troubled teenage boy tossed around in a town of adults too confused by their own lives to help him sort out his own. Justin Cobb (Lou Pucci) is seventeen and still sucks his thumb, despite the best efforts of his New Age orthodontist (Keanu Reeves in a hilarious cameo; think Patrick Swayze in "Donnie Darko"), his distracted parents (Vincent D'Onfrio and Tilda Swinton) and his debate coach (Vince Vaughn).

After a hypnosis session in the orthodontic chair puts Justin off his thumb, he searches for anything to replace it. Justin changes from quiet misfit to Ritalin-charged debate king to burnout. We follow him through the streets of suburban Oregon, down to the celebrity rehab center where his mother may or may not be having an affair with a cheezeball actor (Benjamin Bratt), to the sports store that his failed-athlete father manages, to abandoned houses as he tries to connect with Rebecca (Kelli Garner), who captivates Justin as she downslides from activist debate captain to disaffected stoner.

In an excellent ensemble cast, Pucci's quiet, understated performance stands out. His long face and wide eyes are haunting as Justin stumbles through his senior year of high school and every change in character is completely believable. Keanu Reeves plays to perfection the hippie that he should have been playing all along and Tilda Swinton is heartbreaking as Justin's loving, distant mother. Vince Vaughn's debate captain, easily manipulated and strangely vulnerable, also stands out - it's a performance against form and so well-played that you hope Vaughn will take on other dramatic projects in the future.

"Thumbsucker" combines the hypnotic cinematography of a Sofia Coppola film with a smart storyline that refuses to be pinned down or tied up at the end. Justin isn't sure how to define himself or even if defining himself is the right thing to do. His attempts to find comfort in his parents fail as his father blunders in understanding his son and his mother struggles to keep both herself and her family happy.

The film uses absurd humor to its advantage, by breaking the film's dreamlike passage of time. One of the best scenes is when Justin, running into his mother's celebrity crush outside the rehab center, is mistaken for a juvie patient and let in on a hilarious, disgusting anecdote involving a spoon and body cavities. The spirit of "Thumbsucker," though, really lies in the intricacy of the relationships between the characters. Everything Justin discovers throughout the movie is both in spite of and because of the adults surrounding him - nothing is neatly packaged. In the manner of most coming-of-age stories, the film doesn't come to a definite end. We watch Justin change and move on, and the lack of finality is strangely satisfying. "Thumbsucker" makes Mills a filmmaker to watch.