Movie review and filmmaker interviews: Son of Rambow

Hammer and tongs hold forth about their wildly imaginative and totally unpredictable light-hearted comedy.

by John P. Meyer

In the world of Son of Rambow, it's the glam '80's in suburban Britain. Will Proudfoot (Bill Milner) is the sort of kid who doesn't fit in at school. He's a shy introvert, living in a richly-visualized fantasy world of his own creation. It helps that he's a mad skillz sketch artist; he creates illuminated texts in the workshop behind his family's home, and draws flipbook animations that could easily land him an internship at ILM.

Limiting his creativity (or perhaps serving to focus his energies in laser-like fashion) is the fact that his family are members of the Plymouth Brethren, which means that he's not allowed to join his fellow students in watching informational videos (since TVs are verboten) and also that he's never, ever seen an actual movie.

Will's classmate Lee Carter (Will Poulter), on the other hand, lives without restrictions: his parents spend most of their time abroad, leaving Lee in the care of a ne'er-do-well teenage brother, whom he idolizes even in the face of blatant fraternal exploitation. Lee is compelled to cook breakfast for, and clean up after, his unappreciative sibling and his hanger-on chums - though on the upside he has the run of the treasure trove of junk and assorted electronics gear in the attached storage garage. Including a veritable cornucopia of pirated films on videotape.

At school, Lee takes out his familial frustrations on teachers and fellow students in accomplished juvenile delinquent fashion. He's a live-action Dennis the Menace who's deadly accurate with all sorts of balls. He meets up with Will as they are both warming a bench in the hallway - Lee for some of his usual mayhem and Will because his classmates are watching an educational videotape. By dint of shared alienation they develop something of an uneasy alliance, which is firmed up considerably when Lee gets a look at Will's sketchbook. They adjourn after class to Lee's garage, where a VCR and a scratchy copy of Rambo: First Blood await.

Lee, it turns out, wants to be a filmmaker, and in Will he finds not only a talented storyboarder but a willing - nay, enthusiastic - actor and stunt person. Swing Tarzan-style into the river while Lee mans the video camera? Will's all over it, despite the fact that - uh oh - he doesn't know how to swim.

Eventually, filmmaking madness strikes the elite of the school population. Will finds himself courted by pretty older girls (who want to appear in the film) and a French exchange student named Didier, who has a fondness for film noir. Will basks in the attention, but Lee - who started it all - feels marginalized. As primary filming nears completion, a dangerous stunt in a junkyard threatens the life of one of the players, leading to an ending laced with pathos.

In case any doubt remains, let's state clearly that Son of Rambow is a refreshingly out-of-left-field movie experience that defies genre and seldom fails to delight. It thrives on the creativity of its script and the spontaneous enthusiasm exhibited by its two kid actors, both of whom make their debuts here.

We spoke with filmmakers Garth Jennings and Nick Goldsmith (known in the music video trade as Hammer & Tongs) while they were in town for the AFI Dallas Film Festival. (In the interest of full disclosure, I whipped Nick at ping pong just prior to our press roundtable - so if he sounds a bit out of breath he was probably still recovering from the 21-13 shellacking I handed him.) Appended to this review are audio files of our discussion, with the following notes on each (roughly 5-minute) segment:

Part 1. Religion as a means of creating story conflict

Part 2. Why the film is set in the '80's, and how Rambo was chosen as the centerpiece

Part 3. The likelihood of a sequel (HINT: there isn't any), and whether this was a harder film to make than Hitchhiker's Guide

Part 4. The challenges of casting child actors, and other projects in the works for the team of hammer & tongs

Part 5. The wild animated sequences in the movie and the talented artist responsible for the sketches and flipbook animations. Working with musicians in the music video business. How English and American audiences react differently to scenes in the film.

Part 6. How they enjoyed their first visit to North Texas, including their attendance at a Stars game ("It was BRILLIANT!") and their meal at Bob's Steak & Chophouse ("Amazing steak!"). How meeting with audiences across the country has been an "extremely rewarding" experience. All about ratings boards (English vs. American), wherein Garth recalls a conversation he had one day with an executive producer in which he advised "we've had four shits and two bastards today, is that all right?" To which the producer replied, "Sure, sure, as long as you haven't had a f*&k."