Like Miranda July, Mike Mills has created a debut feature built around the awkward beauty of everyday life, peeling back layers of the mundane to reveal the often tortured existence of middle-class suburbanites. Unlike July's Me and You and Everyone We Know, however, Mills' Thumbsucker doesn't wallow in meaningless quirks or weigh its dialogue down with overdetermined metaphors and contrived allegorical speeches. It's lyrical and occasionally pretentious, but it's also remarkably realistic.
Pucci plays Oregon teen Justin Cobb, a typical neurotic outsider with a penchant for sucking his thumb. His father (D'Onofrio) thinks it's high time he grows out of the habit, while his mother (Swinton) is more indulgent. Justin gets hypnotized by his hippie-dippy orthodontist (Keanu Reeves, in a hilarious performance tailored perfectly to his laconic style), starts and stops taking Ritalin and develops a pot-smoking habit, all in an effort to achieve a state of normalcy.
That state, of course, is non-existent, and if Thumbsucker's "be yourself" message is trite, the way it goes about getting there isn't. Instead of trying to shock audiences with sensationalistic "exposés" about the dirty secrets of suburbia, Mills presents a family that's loving, flawed, and yes, normal. The problems they have are not exaggerated, except in their own minds. Justin's struggle for normalcy is so all-consuming to him that he doesn't see how typical it really is, and how everyone around him is struggling with the same thing in their own way.
Even when given the opportunity to veer into clichéd indie-movie territory, Mills stays his course, with characters who are always human even when they are delivering elegantly crafted dialogue. Although the supporting cast is littered with big names (Benjamin Bratt and Vince Vaughn also show up), none of them are showboating, and Mills knows exactly how to play to the strengths of actors such as Reeves and Vaughn, who've become entrenched in certain types of roles.
What's most remarkable is how restrained the film is in its excesses, how its occasional quirks serve not as vainglorious demonstrations of cleverness, but rather inform the ways the characters face their everyday problems. By keeping his ambitions in check, Mills may not have reached something profound, but he's done one better: He's reached something real.