There’s a scene at the beginning of Son of Rambow that sums up the rest of the film quite nicely. 11 year-old Lee Carter (Will Poulter) pelts down the footpath after pirating a movie (Rambo: First Blood, obviously) at the local cinema. Passing a garden where a man on a ladder trims a tree, Carter pauses, picks up a soccer ball, and pegs the gardener in the head. Then he continues pelting on.

 

Up until that point the film had been a fairly by-the-book kids’ flick: bright, sunny countryside, jaunty orchestral score, and cheeky little cockney scamp doing his best Dennis the Menace / Kevin from Home Alone. But there’s something about that unexpected moment when he chucks the soccer ball that tips you off that things will be a little bit special in the movie.

 

 

Written and directed by Garth Jennings (2005’s The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy), there definitely is a little something special about Son of Rambow. Set in a small English village sometime during the 80s, it centres on 11 year-old Will Proudfoot (Bill Milner), who lives in a highly religious family whose beliefs shun television, discourage interaction with outsiders, and (bizarrely) require watches to be removed before prayer. It comes as more than a mere cinematic revelation, then, for sheltered little Will to see Lee Carter’s bootlegged copy of First Blood. Will becomes positively mesmerised by the images of Stallone shooting soldiers, diving from explosions and menacing County Sherriff Teasle with a knife. Carter and he quickly become friends, and become absorbed by the prospect of making a Rambo sequel to submit to a young filmmaker’s contest. Along the way Will clashes with his family, befriends the coolest French kid at school, and the project spirals further and further out of the boys’ control.

 

In many ways Son of Rambow is a discordant film, often splicing moments of pure kids’ funfare with comically violent and dangerous stunts – watch the montage of Will & Carter filming their first volley of footage (where Will is shot off a see-saw to fly through the air and crash into a pile of scrap) for the perfect example. And while it works to keep cynical grown-up viewers interested along the way, there is some content that seems like it would be a little jarring for the chillun to watch – Carter copping a rock to the head and immediately bleeding profusely springs to mind.

 

But it is a film with a lot of heart, and a lot of its success springs from the quality performances from the child actors in the leads. Bill Milner brings a sweet, wide-eyed quality to the naïve Will – but the real star of the show is Will Poulter, who recalls River Phoenix’s performance in Stand By Me (1986) as the tough-with-a-heart-of-gold Carter. Carter’s relationship with his older brother is especially well played.

 

The other notable presence in Son of Rambow is the era in which it is set – the mid 1980s, a popular time to get nostalgic over at the moment within pop culture. The 80s rules just about everything going on in the film, with New Romantic fashion, carefully groomed long locks on men, and retro music all plastered quite thickly on top. Joby Talbot’s original orchestral score skirts with overproduction at points, excessively punctuating moments that would perhaps be better left bare, but it is this music from the 1980s – the Cure, Duran Duran, Blondie, &tc – that is especially successful in establishing tone.

 

If anything, it is the strange combination of pure children’s’ film and eccentric adult nostalgia that makes Son of Rambow a little difficult to swallow. It seems to teeter at moments between the two, but in the end never manages to convince fully that it is one or the other. But if you like Rambo or the Cure – or if you’re too young to remember either of those things – then it might just be worth a look.