AFI Dallas International Film Festival - ‘Son of Rambow’

(UK, 2007, 96 mins)

Directed By: Garth Jennings

Son of Rambow is a hilariously fresh and visually inventive take on friendship, family, film heroes and the death-defying adventures of growing up in the video age.

In 1980s Britain, young Will Proudfoot is raised in isolation among The Brethren, a puritanical religious sect that forbids music and TV. When Will encounters his first movie, a pirated copy of Rambo: First Blood, his imagination is blown wide open. Will sets out to join forces with the seemingly diabolical school bully, Lee Carter, to make their own action epic, devising wildly creative, on-the-fly stunts, not to mention equally elaborate schemes for creating a movie of total commitment and nonstop thrills while hiding out from The Brethren.

Filmed in a creatively madcap, homemade style with a mostly amateur cast and a wry, comic-tinged nostalgia, Garth Jennings captures both the agony and the ecstasy of a camcorder childhood.

Information from the AFI website