Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with a look at one of my most anticipated films at Sundance this year, SON OF RAMBOW, written and directed by Garth Jennings (of Hammer & Tongs fame, who did HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY).
I was so hoping it'd be great. The movies at Sundance have been consistently good, some really, really good, some a little bad. But the last 3 films I've seen, THE SIGNAL, CLUBHOUSE and SON OF RAMBOW were fuckin' great.
SON OF RAMBOW is many things. It's a comedy, absurd at times, it's a fantasy, it's a family drama, it's a coming of age story and it's also a love letter to watching and participating in the making of movies.
The cast is mostly composed of young kids, with a few grownups thrown in, mostly to be controlling assholes.
The two main kids are a hoodlum and an innocent. The innocent is a boy named Will (Bill Milner) all of 9 or 10 years old who is growing up in a Plymouth Brethren household and barred from ever watching a film or TV. His imagination is huge and he draws all over the place, makes flip-page cartoons in his school books and sketches all over his bible.
We first meet the hoodlum kicking back in a movie theater, smoking a cigarette, pointing a bulky '80s videotape recorder at the screen. FIRST BLOOD is playing and we get to see the great scene with Stallone and Dennehy. "I'll give you a war you wouldn't believe."
Through some curious circumstances, that bootleg is the first time young Will is exposed to the world of cinema. His already overactive imagination goes into hyper-drive and he quickly becomes obsessed with it. He starts imagining his long dead father is Rambo (which he spells as "RAMBOW") and it's his mission to save him from an evil scarecrow.
His imagination is focused by the hood, who wants to make a movie to enter into a BBC competition. Carter, the hood, originally starts doing a direct shot for shot remake of FIRST BLOOD, but soon Will's enthusiasm catches on with Carter and they make this new version.
Jennings' movie describes how a film can bring people together, people who ordinarily never give each other the time of day, but with this shared passion new friendships are born. There's also the negative side, betrayals, friendships tested and broken.
SPACED's Jessica Stevenson plays the strict, but loving mother... strangely enough, one of the only completely straight-person roles in this comedy. There's also this great, incredibly funny side character of a cool French exchange student. He's totally '80s androgenoused out, with a haircut an inch from being a Flock of Seagulls. He's totally into The Cure, but pre-Goth. He begins to lead a small army of worshipers at this school and soon has a very real interest in this Son of Rambow movie the kids are shooting.
I'm sure there must be some inspiration from that RAIDERS remake that surfaced a couple of years ago. I can't imagine Jennings wouldn't have heard of it. I've arranged to speak with him tomorrow for an interview, so I'm sure it'll come up.
I didn't realize how much I've missed this coming of age genre until this one played out. The kids are all real, but there's a fantasy element to it and tons of cursing. Hooray for kids acting like real kids.
This film is great. Any other film festival and it'd be the best film of the fest. Right now, this one is up there. Paramount Vantage just picked this up for a ton of money, so expect to see it get a huge release, which it more than deserves. SON OF RAMBOW is one of the most enjoyable movies I've seen this year. It's just a great time sitting in the theater.
-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com
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