British school kids go camcorder-crazy in Son of Rambow
In First Blood (1982) when Sylvester Stallone dons his iconic headband he doesn’t tie the knot in the back like a normal person. Instead he ties it just in front of his ear so that the strands dangle down over his cheek. I always thought that looked kind of funny. It looks even funnier on a little British kid; especially when the headband is a striped necktie and the kid is pointing a fake homemade bazooka at a plastic dog.
It’s the early 1980s and young English schoolboy Will Proudfoot (Bill Milner) has never seen a movie or watched television. His family belongs to a Christian sect called the Plymouth Brethren who apparently shun such entertainment. The lad clearly has a creative bent because his Bible is covered with fantastic colourful drawings and even some flip-book animation. When educational films are shown in class Will is permitted to wait outside in the hall which is where he meets the school hellion Lee Carter (Will Poulter). Lee of course is ejected into the hallway for entirely different reasons as he is an incorrigible troublemaker. Within minutes Lee has swindled Will out of a wristwatch and has convinced him to work as a “stuntman” in the movie he’s making with his brother’s camcorder.
The two boys couldn’t be more dissimilar. Flippant and deceitful Lee bosses his timid and polite classmate around mercilessly. Then while trapped in a room with a VCR playing a bootleg copy of First Blood Will gets his first taste of cinema and becomes wildly overstimulated. After the movie he races through a field his heart pounding while he imagines animated explosions going on all around him. Scarecrows become lurching jagged-mouthed monsters in his eyes while a dog seems to be swooping down on him from the sky like the helicopter that menaced Sylvester Stallone. His panic turning into exhilaration Will scribbles out storyboards based on the nightmare visions in his head and the musclebound heroics he saw onscreen. By the time Lee shows up with his camcorder ready to shoot some unscripted generic horseplay Will has transformed himself into “Son of Rambow” (sic) and is ready to make the most ambitious homemade action movie ever.
The boys are instantly seized by a love of filmmaking and their relationship evolves into genuine friendship so convincing that Lee’s bullying seems like a distant memory. They film themselves performing incredibly dangerous stunts secure in the illusion of indestructibility that all boys this age have. They’re having the time of their lives.
Other kids find out about the movie and join in the fun. Before long the production is much larger than they imagined and Will finds himself one of the most popular kids in school. Losing control of his own project Lee is forced to reconsider his first real friendship while finally confronting his dysfunctional home life. Meanwhile Will’s mom (Jessica Stevenson) ponders what to do about her wayward offspring and considers taking drastic action to get him back on the straight and narrow. A perfect re-creation of the creativity and ingenuity of youth Son of Rambow is action-packed funny and heartwarming.
