With apologies to Mr. Stallone, no one would ever argue First Blood was an essential part of any healthy childhood. But the ability to make-believe certainly is.
Son of Rambow (2008)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:115
Fresh:85
Rotten:30
Average Rating:6.8/10
Consensus: Undeniable heart and charming young leads save the film's nostalgic storyline from suffering at the hands predictability.
Theatrical Release:04-04-2008
Synopsis: Writer-director Garth Jennings and producer Nick Goldsmith, who as Hammer & Tongs have made music videos for such groups as Fatboy Slim, Supergrass, Blur, and REM, follow up their 2005 film, THE... Writer-director Garth Jennings and producer Nick Goldsmith, who as Hammer & Tongs have made music videos for such groups as Fatboy Slim, Supergrass, Blur, and REM, follow up their 2005 film, THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY, with the charming indie SON OF RAMBOW, a love letter to the movies. A success at such festivals as Toronto and Sundance, SON OF RAMBOW stars Bill Milner as Will Proudfoot, a shy, reserved young boy who is different from the other kids because his family is part of the Brethren, a religion that shuns the outside world, not allowing him to have friends at school or to watch television. While in the hallway in school one day because he can't watch an educational film in class, Will gets into a fight with Lee Carter (Will Poulter), a tough kid who gets into trouble all the time. Lee forces Will to help him make a homemade version of the Sylvester Stallone film FIRST BLOOD, but after watching the original, Will is captivated by the movie and writes his own sequel, casting himself as the son of Rambow (he misspells the name of the character). Will and Lee use their imagination and lots of grit to get the project off the ground, bonding as only blood brothers can. But soon the entire school wants to participate in the movie, including ultra-cool French exchange student Didier Revol (Jules Sitruk), jeopardizing the integrity of the production as well as Will and Lee's growing friendship. Milner and Poulter, both making their feature-film debuts, are engaging as the lead characters. Jennings sets SON OF RAMBOW in the 1980s, before cell phones, digital cameras, and YouTube changed the way people communicate. Amid a soundtrack that includes music from such seminal period bands as The Cure and Depeche Mode, the two young boys learn about family and friendship, jealousy and ego as their carefully controlled worlds threaten to implode. [More]
Starring: Will Poulter, Bill Milner, Jules Sitruck, Charlie Thrift
Starring: Will Poulter, Bill Milner, Jules Sitruck, Charlie Thrift, Jessica Stevenson, Neil Dudgeon
Director: Garth Jennings
Director: Garth Jennings
Screenwriter: Garth Jennings
Producer: Nick Goldsmith
Composer: Joby Talbot
Studio: Paramount Vantage
Reviews for Son of Rambow
Son of Rambow is an inventive and amusing coming-of-age movie that deftly entwines elements of farce and fantasy, rebelliousness and sentiment, while paying seriously funny tribute to the transcendent power of art.
These two boys have, along with writer-director Garth Jennings, turned a coming-of-age story into a treatise on both the fragility of artistic vision and the danger of popular opinion.
Son of Rambow is half a great movie. At its best, it is a comic epic for half-pints.
After the movie, I imagined its writer-director, Garth Jennings (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) being more than a little like Will, and the movie uncannily similar to one of Will's comic epics.
Sweet and sentimental, a bit racy to be a kids' film, a bit tame as grown-up entertainment, Son of Rambow is still a magical romp about childhood discovery and the birth of a lifelong love of the movies.
(Son of Rambow) is definitely a movie out of left field, but it does have some pretty funny laughs and does make you feel really tingly inside.
Son of Rambow is an adorable schoolboy nostalgia trip, a perfect example of everything independent cinema should be.
Son of Rambow is filled with small surprises and treasures, a veritable bounty of delight.
Quirky but curiously irritating British period comedy...tries hard to be different, only to prove that different doesn't necessarily mean better, or even good.
The most beautiful and tear jerking journey in a child's world of make believe. The child in us interprets Rambo and the film character never looked so good.
Milner and Poulter are incredibly natural in roles that ask them to be alternately goofy, angry, and melancholy -- never poor-widdle-me sad -- skills that are further emphasized in the film's third gem: the boys' movie itself.
The rapport between the two rogue cineastes is enough to carry both films: the one they're making and the one Jennings is trying to make.
A heartfelt, feel-good movie that underscores one of the great things about the cinema: Going to the movies is not a passive or solitary experience but one that brings us together, in a group, to try to understand how other people live and behave.
Milner and Poulter are a lot of fun to watch, a pair of first-timer naturals who don't reek of Dakota Fanning Young Actorliness.
Plenty happens, but little of it advances the action, until the finale, which is lovely, but would have been a lot lovelier after 35 minutes, not 90.
Watching skinny-armed little Will pretend to be the spawn of Sly Stallone in a series of botched feats of derring-do is a treat, as is much of this film.
Son of Rambow is too lighthearted a movie to seriously play buzzkill with the audience's good time. And feature film first-timers Milner and Poulter play off each other so smoothly, they could be the Coen brothers as schoolboys.
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