Thumbsucker

I honestly can't figure out whether I thought this was a good movie.  While watching it, I was kind of like, "eh," but then at the end, I was like, "that was a good movie".  So I guess I liked it?

It centers around 17-year-old outcast Justin Cobb (Lou Taylor Pucci), who still sucks his thumb.  It embarrasses his parents, Audrey (Tilda Swinton) and Mike (Vincent D'Onofrio), and his orthodontist (Keanu Reeves) (!!) offers to hypnotize him to make him stop.  And the story just kind of goes from there.  Justin is a member of the debate team, whose adviser is played by Vince Vaughn - making this one of the rare one-two Vince punches with both D'Onofrio AND Vaughn.  Justin's romantic entanglements with Rebecca (Kelli Warner) add cringes to an otherwise already cringe-inducing film.

I mean if Keanu Reeves is your orthodontist, something is already wrong.

The story is saddish but engaging.  I think I did like it.

On a side note, I sucked my middle and ring finger on my left hand until I was 28 years old.  This was an interesting movie for me because it was a boy, and his parents were pressuring him to stop, and his teeth had  been affected.  I don't really know why I did it, except that my parents were kind of distracted when I was around the ages that a kid would usually stop sucking fingers, and I just happened to never stop.  So the whole time I was in elementary school, middle school, a dance cult, high school, COLLEGE - I had boyfriends AND was in a sorority and nobody ever made fun of me to my face.  That may not be true, but I think everyone basically was fine with it.  I made it to adulthood, again with the boyfriends, friends, etc. - and then when I was 28, Santa gave me a handheld video game that I started playing when I was watching TV or falling asleep - the times I had previously sucked my fingers - and I just sort of stopped.  Like, accidentally.  With no fanfare.  I remember once, my sister-in-law kind of made a jab at me about it, and I was like, "I don't do that anymore."  And she didn't believe that I would have stopped with no mention of it - but seriously, it just went away.  No orthodontic problems, either.

Availability: DVD only
Released: 2005
Added to my queue: 1/1/2008
Reason added to my queue: Unknown