Son of Rambow - Garth Jennings (2007)

A nostalgic trip back to a time when Boy George could complete a Rubik’s cube in 28 seconds – my blue chinny beard!

Summer, U.K, 1982 – Rambo: First Blood is out at the cinema and Lee Carter is filming it with his camcorder whilst relaxing with a cigarette, aged 12. Smelly rubbers are in at school and, were they not deemed inapproprate in some fashion by his mother,  Will Proudfoot would be using them to rework his thousands of drawings. He sits in a musty shed at a makeshift desk, occasionally feeding his pet mice who live in the grass trimmings hod, and avoiding the omnipresent gaze of the Plymouth Bretheren family, of which his mother is a follower.

One day at school when Will leaves the classroom (he's not permitted to watch TV), Lee Carter gets thrown out of an adjoining room, to the great delight of his fellow classmates. An altercation with a goldfish bowl seals their fate together, the streetwise tyke and the reluctant alter boy. Lee sees an opportunity to abuse Will's better nature, but genuine friendships can come from the strangest motives, and it transpires that Will, upon watching a pirate copy of Rambo, is prepared to dedicate his life to being the star in Lee's action movie - Son of Rambow. After a near-drowning, the friendship is cemented in true boy style – by becoming blood brothers.

Here is a warm and affectionate film which ambles along nicely, and has all the feel of the early 80s for people like myself who were growing up then. This is a nostalgic tale about that fathomless well of imagination boys and girls all have - the twilight of the age of innocence, the last generation of children to be kicked out until tea time in a world unaware of lurking dangers in park bushes.

Granted, it won’t win oscars for performances or camera work – it has a sort of roughness to it which compliments the general ethos of what the two boys are doing in the film itself. It is, of course, largely anecdotal, as writer and director Garth Jennings freely admits. He and his friends actually attempted to film a sequel to Rambo: First Blood, so it is no surprise that the highlight of the film, the boys' version is a delight to watch, filled with material that is too funny not to be true. I was pleasantly reminded of idioms like the use of ‘skills’ as a general form of positivity, French exchange students, the chorus of cheers as someone got thrown out of class, and those endless mud-splattered, knee-patched summer days.

Worth a look, especially if you were growing up in that time and place – you’ll practically be able to taste the Space Dust.