'Son of Rambow' a sly comedy about junior filmmaking

Son of Rambow is an adorable, indie-edgy comedy from England set in the 1980s. It's about that coming-of-age moment when a child first falls in love with the cinema.

Will Proudfoot (Bill Milner) is a fatherless elementary schooler whose life inside his mother's religious cult has kept him away from pop culture. He's not allowed to watch TV and is exiled to the school hallways any time the class views an educational documentary.

The closest he's ever been to a cinema is reading Bible verses to save sinners buying tickets to First Blood. But he has a vivid imagination. He draws comics and fantasizes a world of action and magical creatures and a search for his lost (dead) dad.

Lee Carter (Will Poulter) is his polar opposite. He smokes, teases, taunts, shoplifts and bootlegs new movies like First Blood. He blackmails poor Will into helping him make his movie.

Lee Carter, always addressed by first and last names, wants to win the BBC's young filmmaker's screen test. And since the only movie Will has seen was Lee Carter's pirate copy of First Blood, Will vows to play "Son of Rambow." He proceeds to storyboard, script and play the lead in Lee Carter's movie.

Will, almost drunk with the experience of having seen his first-ever movie, fantasizes hand-animated versions of the movie's "rescue Dad" story. Lee Carter puts on the tough, loner filmmaker pose like an 11-year-old Tarantino.

The stunts are wacky and dangerous and seriously DIY — ketchup for blood, see-saw catapult jumps, kites for flying dogs and the like. The stunts go wrong more often than not, making us fear for poor Will's safety. The lads enlist elderly patients at Lee Carter's family rest-home for bit parts.

But Lee Carter is an unpopular, unhappy lad. He's basically a slave to his not-much-older brother, and hated in school. He's even unhappier when Will lets their film get hijacked by super-cool French exchange student Didier (Jules Sitruk). Didier is bored but wants to be a movie star, so he agrees to do the movie with the oddball duo. This, in turn, brings along all the popular kids who are keen to hang out with Didier.

The music video team of director Garth Jennings and producer Nick Goldsmith, who mucked up the big screen Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, atone for their sins with this writing-directing comeback. But the film turns cluttered, unfocused and even sappy in its last third.

Sweet and sentimental, Son of Rambow is still a small miracle of a romp about childhood discovery and the birth of a lifelong love of the movies.

The Orlando Sentinel is a Tribune Co. newspaper.

Son of Rambow

Related topic galleries: Boca Raton, Palm Beach (Palm Beach, Florida), Tribune Company, Music Industry, Health and Safety at School, Fort Lauderdale, Cults and Sects

• AUTOBODY

• DENTAL ASSISTANT

• ELECTRICIANS

• ENGINEERING

• CAD MICROSTATION DRAFTER

• View all Top Jobs