film | Arrested development

There's been a feeling of diminishing returns to the whole medicated suburban-youth malaise genre since Donnie Darko set the bar admittedly high in 2001, and the ho-hum THUMBSUCKER does nothing to buck the trend. In other words, if any combination of the past year's Garden State, Imaginary Heroes and The Chumscrubber already tested your patience, prepare for yet another drowsy indie-film portrait of generational angst to induce fits of endless fidgeting. That one of Chumscrubber's supporting actors plays the lead role here underlines the movie's broken-record aura.

Actually, Lou Pucci is quite good as Thumbsucker's protagonist, an apathetic high school senior named Justin who engages in the titular digit-fixation as a infantile rebuttal to growing up. Bothered by his detachment and lack of scholarly application, mom and dad (pitch-perfect Tilda Swinton and Vincent D'Onofrio) find a temporary fix in the ritalin prescription that transforms Justin into a bright, attentive debate-team superstar, but fame wanes when his focus shifts to drug and sexual experimentation with his on-again/off-again burnout girlfriend (Kelli Garner). Thumbsucker thankfully never turns into a preachy public service announcement, but it usually feels as generic.

Ultimately, Justin's subtle, substance-addled parable takes a backseat to the more engaging secondary characters, especially Swinton's serenely kooky parent and a pleasantly low-key Vince Vaughn as a teacher with atypical mentoring methods. (Keanu Reeves, meanwhile, gives a jarringly uninspired, what-the-hell? performance as a zen-dippy dentist who advises Justin to call on his "power animal" for spiritual guidance.) Director/screenwriter Mike Mills selects some savvy songs by Elliott Smith and Polyphonic Spree to score his tale of adolescent unease, so pray his next project is a mix tape in lieu of another movie like Thumbsucker. C