Son of Rambow
Director:  Garth Jennings

“Make Believe. Not War.”

Anyone who was ever a child who has memories of happy, carefree days where your world was as vast as your imagination and sense of adventure could make it, can appreciate and enjoy this cinematic trip back in time. 

Son of Rambow (purposefully misspelled for legal and non-confusion purposes) is a fun, funny, fresh, touching, inventive, superbly filmed, directed, and acted coming of age film centering around the unlikely friendship between shy Will Proudfoot, raised in isolation amongst a religious sect called The Brethren but allowed to attend public school, and Lee Carter, the school bully.  The story takes place in 1980’s England.  It is Lee’s dream to make a film to enter into the young filmmaker’s contest.  Lee’s parents are rich travelers, his older brother ignores him, and so all he really has is this dream.  Will gets caught up in the dream when he sees a tape of Lee’s inspiration, the movie “Rambo: First Blood.”  Coming from a sect where music, films, and television are forbidden, this movie blasts open Will’s imagination.  He crafts the story and willingly starts in “Son of Rambow.” We get to watch the two in their amazingly creative and often crazy action stunts, scenes, and schemes to get the shots they need with a drive, passion, and love for their story that could rival any adult filmmaker.  Threats to their friendship and film come from school cliques and others who try to muscle in on their film and distance the boys’ growing friendship, not to mention a religion that says that they shouldn’t even be friends and under which Will, if caught, could cause his whole family’s expulsion from their community.

This film is about childhood, about imagination, about the days when anything was possible.  It’s about storytelling.  It’s about dreams.  It’s about the power of friendship above all things.  This audience hit at the Sundance Film Festival by the director of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy can be enjoyed by parents, kids, those without kids, just anyone who wants a good, fun, funny, touching, thoroughly enjoyable escape.  “Son of Rambow” is just one damn fine little film.

Lucy Cruell