Son of Rambow (DVD)

Connect to Facebook/Twitter, recommend via email and much more.

---

Everybody wants to make another "Napoleon Dynamite," a small-budget sleeper that cost about $1.98 to make and brings in millions at the box office. But it's not as easy as it sounds. Ask English writer and directer Garth Jennings, whose only previous big-screen effort was 2005's "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." Even though he tried with 2008's "Son of Rambow," and the studio put some effort into promoting it, it hardly made a ripple in the public's consciousness.

Anyway, few names in the history of cinema have become so iconic that people can find instant recognition in them, even disguised in the title of a largely unrelated movie. So it is with "Son of Rambow," a mildly pleasing, if highly uneven, British comedy-drama about a pair of youngsters' amateur filmmaking exploits.

"Son of Rambow" is a gentle tale, quite a small affair compared to the CGI-heavy "Hitchhiker's Guide" and much more personal. Set in the early 1980s in an English suburb, "Rambow" tells the story of two very opposite youths, aged around eleven or so, who form an unlikely friendship while filming a home movie about their hero, Rambo. As Jennings was born in 1972, it's not hard to see the biographical connections.

The MPAA gave the film a PG-13 rating for "some violence and reckless behavior." I like the "reckless behavior" part; I can't remember ever noticing that in a rating before. In any case, the film's gentleness makes it almost ideal for family viewing, except for two minor drawbacks. The first is that it's so gentle and sweet, it's close to dull, with the story line following formula to the letter. I'll get to the second drawback in a minute.

Will Proudfoot (Bill Milner) is a shy, innocent, naive kid, raised in a devoutly religious family whose members cannot go to the movies, watch TV, or even listen to music. Will lives with his mother, grandmother, and younger sister. Another boy, Lee Carter (Will Poulter), is about the same age as Will but bigger and stronger. The antithesis of Will, Lee is a bully, a thief, a cheat, and a liar who lives with his older brother and pretty much does what he likes.

Lee persuades Will to help him make a film called "Son of Rambow," which he intends to enter in a BBC Television contest. Will doesn't really know Lee very well but consents to help out partly because he's afraid to refuse and partly because he's fascinated by this strange new person in his life. Naturally, everything you'd expect to happen does happen: the boys raise a little havoc; Will has to sneak out of the house behind his mother's back to participate; the rest of the school gets wind of the project and all the other youngsters want to be in on it, including the supercool new French foreign exchange student whom all the girls drool over; there's an inevitable climactic conflict; and everybody gets together in the end and learns a valuable life lesson. As I say, formula to the letter.

The other minor drawback for family viewing, though, may be more serious, and I'm not sure if the filmmakers meant it intentionally or not. As a coming-of-age story, the movie seems to suggest that it's good to move off on your own eventually and begin doing your own thinking for yourself, as Will does. But indirectly it also suggests that it's OK to disregard your parent's advice and direction in doing so. Since the movie rather stacks the cards in Will's favor by making his ultra-religious home life so repressive, it expects us to cheer when he breaks free. But he's only about eleven years old, and he learns to lie, cheat, and steal. It's not as though he's seventeen or eighteen when he makes these decisions. You can see why I doubt that a lot of parents might approve of the film's ultimate message of rebellion, to say nothing of its antireligious bent.

Then, there's the matter of the film's tone. Is it a comedy or a drama? Jennings surely meant it as a little of both, yet there is not enough original material to satisfy one's desire for either one. The humor is mostly of the slapstick variety, with Will stumbling around, getting shot at with a bow and arrow, falling out of a tree, that sort of thing. Conversely, the drama is mostly of the overwrought kind: exaggerated family tensions, tenuous interpersonal relations, and the close-to-disastrous consequences of the filmmaking gone amuck. There's nothing new here to compel one's interest.