In comedic 'Rambow,' boys grow up fast
There are a few similarities between ‘‘Speed Racer’’ and ‘‘Son of Rambow,’’ the omnivorous Hollywood action film and the tiny British comedy opening today. Both movies show their young heroes doodling flip-book animations in the margins of their books; both are willful, even rebellious acts of and about imagination. One movie attacks your eyeballs, though, while the other tickles your sensibilities and sticks to your ribs. You can probably guess which one I’m recommending.
‘‘Son of Rambow’’ is set in the early 1980s in the home counties of England, and its hero is a wide-eyed runt named Will Proudfoot (Bill Milner). He’s around 10, fatherless, a member of a religious sect known as the Plymouth Brethren; like the Amish, they steer clear of modernity. Every time Will’s teacher shows the class a documentary, the boy has to sit out in the hall. This is where he meets the slightly older Lee Carter (Will Poulter), who for all practical purposes is the devil.
Unfolding at a brisk, surreally comic narrative trot, ‘‘Rambow’’ watches the relationship between these two evolve from bully and victim to partners in crime and creativity. The moment of truth comes x when Will watches a pirated video of ‘‘First Blood,’’ the 1982 Sylvester Stallone opus that cognoscenti regard as ‘‘the good Rambo movie.’’ Here at last are all the mayhem, explosions, and marble-mouthed heroism a starved 10-year-old boy needs.
Will instantly folds the Rambo story line into his fantasy life — in his classroom daydreams he’s now the Son of Rambow, rescuing the dad who in real life died of an aneurysm while mowing the lawn. And there the dream would stay but for one thing: Carter has a video camera, and he wants to make a film.
In many ways, ‘‘Son of Rambow’’ plays like a pint-size, even cheekier version of the recent Michel Gondry film ‘‘Be Kind Rewind.’’ Both are stories about people making movies not because it’s their job but because doing so brings a vast sense of play into their lives. In Will’s case, play is exactly what he’s not allowed — his mother (Jessica Stevenson) has the steel-blue eyes of a true believer — and so it carries a revolutionary force.
The revolution turns out to be contagious. Will and Carter’s movie captures the attention of Didier (Jules Sitruk), a French exchange student and a vision of 1983 cool — red vinyl jacket, pointy boots, streaked hair — that has reduced the entire school population to prostrate awe. When Didier decides he wants in (he casts himself as a rogue mercenary called ‘‘Le Wolf’’), so do the other students, leading to an unexpected creative conflict between the directors: Will has the newfound popularity and the ideas, but Carter owns the camera.
‘‘Son of Rambow’’ isn’t a classic of schoolyard anarchy on the order of ‘‘If .....’’ or ‘‘Zero for Conduct’’ — it tugs at the heart too insistently toward the end — but it’s only one or two districts over, and the performances are wonderful. (So’s the soundtrack, a core sampling of mid-’80s New Wave that can make some of us weep with grateful nostalgia.) Milner has the wide eyes of an alien boy marveling politely at everything he sees; when Le Wolf offers to save his dad, Son of Rambow brightly replies ‘‘Thanks ever so much!’’
As Carter the post-punk Artful Dodger, Poulter is simply a find: a kid with the seasoned comedy reflexes of an ancient vaudevillian and a young man’s disgust with a world that hasn’t played him fair. Ed Westwick of ‘‘Gossip Girl’’ plays the character’s older brother, a New Romantic thug, but it’s hard to believe Poulter would stay under anyone’s thumb for long. One of the weaknesses of ‘‘Son of Rambow’’ is that it ultimately requires Carter to display emotional sensitivity, which is like asking for pity from a house cat — you’re just wasting your time.
The film’s strengths are longer lasting: A giddy eye for the fads that can sweep a school, the pacing and visual snap of a good cartoon, an understanding of the impossibility of ever getting a movie made. The writer-director is Garth Jennings, who with producer Nick Goldsmith makes up Hammer & Tongs, a production company that has British music videos and an overly maligned 2005 movie version of ‘‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’’ to its credit. ‘‘Son of Rambow,’’ among other things, is about partnership and the child’s play it can redeem from life. It’s an absolute delight.
