This movie (please don't call it a "film") is a mish-mosh of styles, themes and techniques lifted from the library of films these dudes must have adored in their short lives (movies like Heathers and Edward Scissorhands). All of these wishful elements that hope to become a film never gel. It really can be summed up in one word: boring. It tries way too hard but ultimately says nothing. Do we need another movie about disaffected teens in a twisted, exaggerated suburbia with crazy Danny Elfmanesque music? Yeah, there's a lot of "hype" about the movie. That's what you get when people spend $ advertising and realize they made a mistake in financing this project. A few performances are good but most are two dimensional. The whole film is two dimensional and superficial, which is ironic because if you try real hard to piece together a theme for this project I think the kids who made it were trying to make a statement against such superficiality. If you find yourself noticing the blue eyeliner on "Crystal's" eyes so much you have to draw only one conclusion -- the story is SO boring, that I'm watching the chick's eyeliner.
We saw this movie at the academy and most in the audience were 70+ years old. But these folks have worked in the business their whole lives and know movies. Guess what they did at the end of the movie? They hissed! The auditorium was full of hissing seniors. Never once have I been to a screening at the academy and heard grandma and grandpa hissing. That was the most entertaining part of the entire evening.
If you want to see an artful film about teenagers go rent "The Virgin Suicides". There's a film where technique exists as a storytelling device as opposed to the technique used in Chumscrubbers which merely exists as a mechanism for the filmmakers to show how "cool" they are.
