Son of Rambow

A few years ago there was an article in Vanity Fair about some kids who were making a shot-for-shot but distinctly low-budget remake of Raiders of the Lost Ark. This effort took them many years, until they were into adulthood. There was some talk of this becoming a feature film, but Garth Jennings has kind of taken that ball and run with it with Son of Rambow, which deals with two English kids making there own Rambo picture.

Each kid has particular cross to bear. Will is a member of a strict religious community that is something like the Amish, in that he is not allowed to watch TV and is discouraged from participating in anything worldly. He does, however, go to a school that has all sorts of kids, and meets Lee Carter, who has no friends and is constantly in trouble. Lee lives with his older brother, since his mother is off in Spain, but the brother barely pays attention to him except when Lee has to wait on him hand and foot. Lee's passion is movies, and has his eyes on winning a film contest for young people. He engages Will as his stuntman, even though he seems to have never seen a movie before he watches Lee's bootleg copy of First Blood. Will, who has a hyperactive imagination (he has drawn pictures on the pages of his Bible and makes flip-books) is bitten by the bug and lies to his mother to help Lee make his film.

Soon, with the arrival of a French exchange student who all the English kids think is maximum cool, the project gets too big, and Lee resents that control is slipping out of his hands. The two friends get estranged, and Will is continually getting into trouble with his mother.

The film, for the most part, is charming and sweet. It never really moves into high gear, maintaining a slight presence that seems designed to not offend more than to entertain. The comedy veers from British drollery to slapstick, which is problematic when the kids are actually put into danger toward the end of the film. I did smile at how some of the kids seemed to be naturals for the film industry, saying things like, "Hurry up, we're losing light!"

The two leads, Bill Milner and Will Poulter, are engaging child actors, and do an effective job of expressing how imaginations can assuage the normal horrors of adolescence. This film would have succeeded more I think, had the screenplay not been so formulaic and had some more of the whimsy from the kids it was about.