"Thumbsucker’s surface is melancholy, but it’s leavened by mordant humor and a kind of Zen-like fatalism."

Just when I am beginning to think I'm at a point in life where things are starting to make sense, I go and read a movie review for the upcoming 'Thumbsucker' with this sentence: "Thumbsucker's surface is melancholy, but it's leavened by mordant humor and a kind of Zen-like fatalism."

Oh my God.

I'm nearly halfway through with my life and I still can't read a review such as this without scratching my head, looking out of my office window and exclaiming, "I've wasted my life." How many years does one have to sit in a classroom to acquire the necessary skills to describe a low budget indy such as 'Thumbsucker' with such pinache, flair and elitism? Okay, sure, I'm good with melancholy. I read Poe in middle school. Leavened? Heard that word at church a few times. But mordant humor? I don't have time to go to dictionary.com to look up mordant. And the worst part of it all? Not only is it "zen-like fatalism", but it's "a kind of Zen-like fatalism". But which kind? And how many kinds are there?

I stumbled onto this review via some subversive counter-culture media site (I was actually just shopping for a t-shirt featuring G.W. with a Moe Howard haircut), so my guess is the author is probably catering to the extremist-left Berkeley College senior lit major. That's not you either?

Oh, well. A very special thank you to Roger Ebert for keeping it simple with the whole thumb rating system. I know what a thumb is.