It's the early 1980s and a group of schoolchildren - lead by spirited Lee Carter (Will Poulter) and his reluctantly recruited 'leading man' Will Proudfoot (Bill Milner) - decide to remake Sylvester Stallone's First Blood with a camcorder.
What follows is a comedic tale of life lessons, faith and enlightenment, home movie stunts and a very skinny boy in a vest.
Praised at independent film festival Sundance, Son of Rambow is destined to be the biggest indie smash since... well, Juno two months earlier.
They say:
TimeOut: "Bracing emotional honesty that packs a real kick."
Empire: "A deeply effective, surprisingly touching tale of family and childhood friendship."
Total Film: "Son of Rambo? Son of Rocky, more like."
We say:
For only his second feature (following The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) director/ writer Garth Jennings has incorporated many themes into Son of Rambow including religious oppression, coming of age, bullying, loneliness, absentee parents, but most of all his film is about being a kid specifically being a boy.
Jennings certainly remembers what school was like in the 1980s with saliva soaked water fountains, veneered TVs, Corona pop, headlocks, teachers who yelled like sergeant majors - a time too when technology was growing up fast with the first appearance of giant mobile phones and top loading VHS.
So when Lee Carter (Poulter, a hardy Steve McQueen alike) starts flashing a borrowed video camera, he brings out the Hollywood in all those around him. No webcams and YouTube here - if you wanted to get yourself in the movies twenty years ago, you had to get your hands dirty.
Starring in Lee's Rambo homage (which he hopes to enter in the BBC's Screen Test competition) is quiet loner Will (Milner). An introverted little guy with pure kindness in his heart. Initially he is exploited by Lee and constantly threatened with the bully’s favourite chant of ‘Tell anyone about this and I’ll smash your face in!’
As shooting gets underway however, their blossoming ‘director/ star’ camaraderie develops into true friendship, shifting the narrative from Monty Python buffoonery to an 'Apaches' style public information film climax (Don't play in the disused factory!) .
Laughter and tears are not easy sentiments to combine in any movie, and can prove particularly difficult when children are the protagonists. Sentimentality is a breeze, but Jennings avoids sentiment and opts for a genuine, believable resolution of air punching emotion instead.
His cast is uniformly outstanding, with each character accorded their own story arc in what is often minimal screen time. The humble Eric Sykes in particular pops up in just two minor scenes. Notice the look on his face when Poulter snatches his money jar though. Wonderful subtlety.
Despite being a movie about kids, this is not really for them as such. The humour is primarily retrospective and many of the sequences that might have a thirty five year old parent of two rolling in the isles will baffle a youngster into submission. Sniffing novelty 'rubbers' in the sixth form common room being a prime example.
It is a pity Jennings' film was held back to coincide with the recent Rambo revival because, apart from the obvious, it has very little to do with the series. Also his flawlessly crafted and hilarious screenplay would have rightly trounced the bandwagon glitz of Juno at the Oscars and taken one home for Blighty.
Son of Rambow is an adorable schoolboy nostalgia trip, a perfect example of everything independent cinema should be. It's original, daring and inspiring - they should put it on the curriculum.
Extras:
Run of the mill extras pad out this one disc release - making of documentary, geography lesson, commentary (with director Garth Jennings, producer Nick Goldsmith and child stars Bill Milner and Will Poulter), US competition winner footage, interviews with Jessica Hynes and Milner/ Poulter, trailer.
The twenty five minute making of is all you really need. It's jolly and all involved look as though they had a fun time, particularly Jennings, who comes across like the cast and crew’s enthusiastic, goofy uncle.
Some interesting revelations are included, such as the entire pre and post production facilities being run from canal boats. Also that the sixteen year old actor playing French exchange pupil Didier is actually from France. Sacrebleu! And we thought he was putting on that pompous accent.
Jessica Hynes’ interview is fluff, but she is so modest and amiable it matters little. Milner and Poulter don't say anything neglected in the making of doc, though it's enlightening they seem such well adjusted young men - not a whiff of stage school stuffiness (this was their first acting gig).
Buy Son of Rambow for the film and view the extras as just that - add ons for the most warm hearted movie experience of the year so far.
CAST
Will Poulter
Bill Milner
Jules Sitruck
Jessica Stevenson
DIRECTOR
Garth Jennings
TIME
95 mins
POSTED...
Tue 8 Apr at 2:18pm
