SON OF RAMBOW

UK, 2008, 96 minutes, Colour.
Bill Millner, Will Poulter, Jules Sitruk, Erik Sykes, Zophia Brooks, Neil Dudgen.
Directed by Garth Jennings.

This is a very entertaining story of two young boys and their friendship – though it raises the perennial questions of how much movies influence behaviour, attitudes and desensitising because of violence.

This is the 1980s when First Blood was released, the first of the Stallone Rambo films. Lee Carter (Will Poulter) lives with his brother in a care home for the elderly. He has a video camera and we first see him pirating First Blood at the cinema. Meanwhile, Will Proudfoot (Bill Milner) stands outside the cinema to read the Bible with other members of the Plymouth Brethren. A series of accidents and misbehaviour (not on Will’s part) brings the two boys together, Lee being something of a con man, a shoplifter and a bully. Will is not even allowed to watch TV documentaries in class so, when he happens to see the pirated First Blood and learns that Lee is making his own film to enter in a BBC competition, his horizons open up considerably.

He is an imaginative sketcher and making a film about Rambow (he gets the spelling wrong) and a growing friendship with Lee becomes his preoccupation. In his imagination and in their film he becomes Son of Rambow with one of the elderly acting as his father (Eric Sykes in an enjoyable cameo). He has to escape his mother’s vigilance and that of Brother Joshua of the Brethren. Complications arise when a group of French exchange students come to the school and a flamboyant boy, Didier (Jules Sitruk) who has everyone doing his beck and call wants to star in the film. Then everyone wants to be in it. Will becomes the celebrity and it goes to his head. Lee is on the outer.

Plenty of emotional complications for Will (whose father is dead) with warnings to his mother from the Brethren to correct him. He clashes with Lee. You know it is going to have a happy ending – but it is a nice one as well. The boys act very well indeed and, though you keep wondering about their aping of Rambo and Colonel Trautman and the action scenes, the stronger themes are those of honesty and friendship.

1. Entertaining? Acclaim? Portrait of childhood? Imagination?

2. The movie background, action films, heroics, violence, the emulating of violence and its effect? The pros and cons of films like Rambo? Healthy to see them? Surfacing aggressions? Not?

3. The title, Will’s mistake in spelling, the student film?

4. UK settings, the 1980’s, the town, the cinema, school, homes and institutions, the countryside? The musical score? The score for the movies – especially the use of Wagner and the Valkyries?

5. The introduction to the 80’s, the clips from First Blood, Stallone and his Rambo character, Brian Dennehy and Richard Crenna in the film? The talk, heroics, confrontations, the jungle? Lee, in the cinema, his recording the film, the audience, smoking (and the No Smoking sign)? Running from the theatre?

6. The contrast with the Capital Brethren outside the cinema. Will and his reading the scriptures? At home, his father, sister, mother, their style, proper, the regulations of the Brethren? Not wearing watches, no television? The influence of Brother Joshua and the household?

7. School, British style, the classes, corridors, the teachers, classes being boring? The French exchange students and Didier? The welcome, the guardians for the French students? Will and Lee in the corridor? Will not able to watch television and so being outside, Lee with the ball, Ed hitting Will? The explanation of going away, waiting at the Principle’s door, Lee’s spiel? Will believing it? Meeting Lee later, his limp, talk about torture? The issue of the watch?

8. The camera, Lee’s house, the institution, Laurence and his bullying, the wealthy-looking house, Lee and the pirated Rambo, Will seeing it, his amazement, the effect, in the field, the scarecrow and the fight, his dreams?

9. The action, the plot, Will and his ability at drawing, the comic style drawings, the blood pact between the two, no swimming, the trees, Will doing everything?

10. At home, Lee’s home, the residence, Eric Sykes as the old man, the nurses?

11. Didier and his imperious style, wanting to be a star, approaching Will, the other students also coming in, the filming, Lee and his being on the outer, Will and his vanity? The humour of the film making?

12. Lee, on-side, at the building, the crash, the rescue? Lee and the rescue? The hospital, unhappy? Laurence coming to see Lee?

13. Brother Joshua, the reprimands, Will’s mother and her reaction, seeing so many lies, the warning, the meeting and the condemnation? The meal, the mother taking off her scarf? The daughter, the grandmother’s presence? The ousting of Brother Joshua?

14. The build-up to the film, the screening, everybody there, the enjoyment of the film? A satisfying ending?