Warm Fuzz
Son of Rambow / Daniel Carlson
At this point, making a coming-of-age movie and setting it in the 1980s no longer qualifies as making a (slightly) period film. The cyclical sounds of pop music and culture, the rise in prominence of filmmakers who were children then, the way that every generation of filmmakers must be necessity and convention exhume the corpses of its collective past and examine them on the silver screen as a kind of coping mechanism for maturity — all these things add up to the fact that writer-director Garth Jennings’ Son of Rambow is at once sweet and funny and complex and also unable to break free from the confines of its recreated era. The bands of today ape the sounds of the bands then; hell, even Sylvester Stallone has dragged himself out of deserved retirement and paraded gamely across multiplexes for another installment in the Rambo franchise. Son of Rambow feels both of its time and almost as if it’s playing out in modern day as nothing more than a host of metareferences and ideas about the 1980s that never do more than reinforce the easy visual clichés that mean you’re watching a movie set in the 1980s. That’s ultimately the film’s biggest problem, seeping into everything from design to the screenplay: Son of Rambow is, underneath it all, an idea of a film instead of the film itself, a series of interlocking scenes and characters that resemble a story but wind up feeling occasionally disconnected, as if Jennings wanted nothing more than pontificate on the hypotheticals of making a movie about two young boys learning the perils of pubescent friendship instead of going all the way and making them real.
Will Proudfoot (Bill Milner) is a lonely boy of 10 or 11 whose family are members of the Plymouth Brethren, a conservative nondenominational sect against whose rules Will is beginning to chafe. They stage a scripture reading on afternoon outside a theater where First Blood is playing, presumably to alert passersby of the film’s inherently base qualities. Meanwhile, inside the theater, Lee Carter (Will Poulter) is watching the movie while filming it on his brother’s video camera and idly smoking a cigarette. The parallel between the boys is clear — they’re both outsiders trying to fit in while wishing they belonged — and before long, they run into each other at school. When Will’s science class watches a documentary, Will quietly excuses himself to sit in the hall, since he’s forbidden to watch TV, and once he’s out there he opens his book of drawings and again immerses himself in the dense fictional world he uses as an escape from the real one. A few doors down, Lee is kicked out of class (to the cheers of the other kids) for causing trouble, but he soon spots Will and recognizes and easy mark. Lee is the kind of cocky, impossibly charismatic little fiend who torments teachers and classmates alike and does his best to raise hell, while Will is meek and shy and happy to play with his flipbooks and imagine himself the hero in an epic story that will never be told. The boys get into a scuffle in the hall, and Lee tells Will he’ll take the heat from the headmistress as long as Will agrees to be the stuntman in the movie Lee’s making for a competition on BBC’s “Screen Test.” Will’s far too trusting to see that Lee can only get people to hang out with him by manipulating them into it, and of course he can’t see the sadness in Lee’s life that drives him to be like this: Lee wants nothing more than the love of his older brother, who does nothing but boss the little boy around and beat him up. Jennings does a good job at tossing the boys together, aided greatly by the chemistry between the talented young actors, but it’s when he attempts to broaden the story that it becomes ungainly and off balance.
Will’s fascination with Lee grows when he sees the bootleg copy of First Blood, inspiring him to generate a story for Lee’s movie in which Will will play the son of Rambo on the search for his warrior father, who’s been kidnapped by an evil scarecrow and a flying dog. (It makes sense to Will.) Will’s working through his feelings about his own father, who died not long before from an aneurysm, as well as exploring the world that the Brethren have forbidden him to experience, but Jennings never makes the stakes high enough to lend the proper weight to Will’s quasi-apostasy or acceptance of his father’s fate. Will’s mother, Mary (Jessica Stevenson), attempts to discipline Will and get him back on the straight and narrow, going so far as to let Brother Joshua (Neil Dudgeon) take Will to a couple extra prayer meetings and even try to take him away for a few days to ostensibly talk some sense into him. But Will never has any qualms about turning his back on his faith: The biggest drag about the prayer meeting is that he misses a day of shooting, and when Joshua shows up to take him out of town, Will yells that Joshua isn’t his father before bolting for the woods. There’s nothing at all wrong with Will’s love of movies and storytelling and how it draws him away from what he used to be and into what he’ll become, but Jennings sets Will up in a consequence-free environment, effectively deflating any potential dramatic conflict that could arise from Will’s having to decide which master to serve.
Still, Milner and Poulter carry the film better than any other child actors could. Poulter is both watchable and lamentable as the school bully who’s nervous about changing enough to let in the outside world, while Milner is the perfect mixture of sweet energy and a desire to please all and do right that always gets mangled by the cruel realities of the world. And Jennings draws a nicely nuanced performance from them both, right down to the way they “act” stiffly in their own film but come across so easily in the larger story. Yet for all its charms, Son of Rambow never shakes the feeling that it’s going over tilled ground, breathing life into the same ideas that inform the genre without quite making them its own.
Daniel Carlson is the managing editor of Pajiba and a low-level employee at a Hollywood industry magazine. You can visit his blog, Slowly Going Bald.
Lost: Cabin Fever | | Pajiba Love 05/12/08 |
Comments
DAMN YOU, CALIFORNIAAAAA!!!!
Well, at least it's this week that it opens here so my rage is slightly mollified. I'm just still miffed about missing the festival screening that I'd already paid for when I literally could not park anywhere near the theater and just had to leave.
One needs several good ales and a few cigarettes after that.
Posted by: Jay at May 12, 2008 2:43 PM
ProudFEET!
Posted by: meh at May 12, 2008 2:48 PM
I'm not sure how, but this movie didn't even hit my radar until yesterday, when I saw the poster for it on my way to Iron Man.
In my hungover state, I thought it was Son of Rainbow and gave a little "what the fuck" before ignoring it and prostrating myself before the altar of RDJ.
Posted by: Pea at May 12, 2008 2:54 PM
This is getting saved on my Netflix queue for sure, especially because the review at Slate.com compared it to Billy Elliot, which is such a great flick! (Speaking of which, anyone see the stage version?)
Posted by: Ariel at May 12, 2008 3:01 PM
mr.wsapnin & I have been looking forward to seeing this movie.
ok--i've been on vacation for the past week. c'mon pajiba! just when you've gotten rid of the "achilles tendon snipping" ad, we know have the anti meat campaign on the right! it's becoming harder to read the reviews with the disturbing images. (and momma likes her meat. sorry vegans.)
Posted by: wsapnin at May 12, 2008 3:21 PM
It looks sweet enough and different enough from most of the other crap playing that I'll probably give it a chance.
But what do I know . . . I'm sitting here with Mr. Holland's Opus in the background. I want to change it, but that seems like a LOT of work.
Posted by: Sharon at May 12, 2008 3:54 PM
Don't worry, Pea, I too saw 'Son of rainbow' and thought it sounded quite random...although, just say that was the title...that would mean Will's father may have been called 'Rainbow', and therefore 'aneurysm' is the same thing as 'Katherine Heigl' which really explains quite a lot...
yeah, OK, I'm meant to be studying the anatomy of the rib cage. There is nothing more boring so making illogical arguements on pajiba seems much more worthwhile...
Posted by: rach at May 13, 2008 12:31 AM
I saw the trailer for this when I saw Be Kind, Rewind. I turned to my Mother (who had attended the showing with me, hence the choice of viewing material) and informed her of the following:
"This is my cinematic hell"
I stand by my previous sentiments. Billy Elliot, Little Voice, The Full Motherfucking Monty all of the above make my soul cry.
Posted by: Alex the Odd at May 13, 2008 6:11 AM
I can conceive of little more personally repugnant to me than being forced to sit through Billy Elliot, other than maybe finding myself inexplicably caught in a time-loop consisting solely of the moments of initial shock and then dawning humiliation immediately following being pantsed by Steven Rock directly in front of Mrs. Crunden when I was eight years old.
Little Voice? Even less interesting to me than the fifteen-minute monologue about the size of my co-worker's infant son's penis I was forced to endure at the office yesterday.
The Full (Motherfucking) Monty is the most bafflingly overrated heap of mediocrity I've ever sat through - I can't imagine how the film managed to brainwash practically the entire of the British population into being convinced that it was the cinematic landmark of the century. Good thing the Scientologists haven't figured out how to harness that kind of mind-control voodoo.
Yet despite all the above, after watching the trailer, I find myself really wanting to watch this one.
Posted by: Dill The Devil at May 13, 2008 6:43 AM
I rescind aforementioned reference to Billy Elliot, for fear of my life. I think I forget sometimes where I am... then I wake up in a drunken stupor, remember that it's Pajiba, and run away before I'm dismembered and thrown to the cinematic wolves for having bad taste.
*slinks out of post*
Posted by: Ariel at May 13, 2008 7:39 AM
Come back Ariel! I'm sure there are plenty of Pajibans who enjoyed Billy Elliot and as the girl who owes three copies of Grease 2 (yes, shut up, I know) I don't think I can claim better taste than anyone really.
I am just a grumpy, grumpy woman who hates anything verging on "heartwarming". And also: puppies. Seriously, ask TK he'll be more than willing to explain how I don't actually have a soul.
Evidently Dill is a man after my own heart. I couldn't agree with you more about TF(M)M it is a film with no redeeming features, in fact I think it may actually be a film so dire that it removes cinematic merit from any film mentioned in the same sentence as it. Observe:
As films goThe Full Monty is dissimilar to Iron Man.
You see? The horrendous levvels of cinematic suck just made Robert Downy Jr slightly less cool. Evil I tell you! Pure, unadulterated evil.
Posted by: Alex the Odd at May 13, 2008 8:26 AM
As a way of testing your hypothesis for myself, I considered the following statement:
"Would I watch The Full Monty if Christian Bale were in it?"
The resulting cognitive dissonance is currently liquifying my frontal lobe.
Posted by: Dill The Devil at May 13, 2008 8:35 AM
Maybe some films just don't translate well into other cultures. Full Monty is just a nice feel good film, it's cinematic cotton candy. Ditto for Billy Elliot & Little Voice.
"I can't imagine how the film managed to brainwash practically the entire of the British population into being convinced that it was the cinematic landmark of the century"
Eh?? I don't think so somehow, or do you know something I don't!!? I don't think anyone in their right mind would claim that Full Monty was a piece of cinematic genius. I think it just got a lot of press because us Brits were proud to have made a commercially successful movie, something which didn't happen too often in the 90s, that I can remember anyway...
Anyone name a huge commercially successful British film other than the ubiquitous 4 Weddings prior to 1997?
(Awaits for the bombardment of films proving me wrong and the accompanying abuse!!..)
Posted by: complicatedj at May 13, 2008 9:10 AM
Now, I haven't seen Little Voice so I can't comment, but I think the reason Full Monty, Billy Elliot, and, if I may add, Calendar Girls have done so well is that they've done something different with the underdog/rag-to-riches storylines. The films themselves seem more fish-out-of-water than anything else, focusing on a poor boy from a blue-collar background, blue collar workers being laid-off, and a group of older (but still pretty) ladies attempting to ballet dance, strip for money, and photograph themselves near-nude to raise money (respectively). What these films have is fleshed-out characters that you really want to succeed. Also, both Billy Elliot and The Full Monty showed the effects of the economic collapse of Northern England that happened under the Thatch.
One thing each movie had was the emotional moment that made you either love the film or, perhaps for some, hate it more.
In Billy Elliot, it was when his dad breaks the strike line and becomes a scab so his son can go to the school he wants to, in The Full Monty it's right before the show when Dan is refusing to go and asks his wife who would want to see him strip and she just smiles and says "I would." In Calendar Girls, you either have the scene with Annie and John right before he dies or, if you prefer, the scene when Chris is reading John's poem.
All of that said, if any theatres near me pick up Son of Rambow, I will probably drag my boyfriend to see it.
Posted by: Renee at May 13, 2008 9:12 AM
I can't do that kind of mental processing Dill, my brain won't allow it. It's actually making my eye twitch just to think of it.
I don't think it's a case of not translating into other cultures complicatedj as Dill and I are both Brits ourselves (and unless I'm confusing him horribly with someone else I believe Dill might actually be from the North, it's possible, nay highly probable that I made that up though).
Hmmm how can I explain this without my work stress (one day out of the year do I have work to do, today is that day and I'd much rather be debating British cinema on Pajiba) sound like antagonism? Forgive me if I sound inadvertantly stroppy, it's because I have to deal with FedEx..
I think for me I actually like it less because it was massively popular (oh Godtopus, was it popular) because it contains all the elements of British life that I hate: gritty determination, overcoming adversity with a twinke in our eyes and a snappy dance routine... actually I think that last one may just be my Musical obsession creeping through.
I completely see your point about fleshed out characters Renee but I just always feel so manipulated when it comes to this type of film they're just so earnest and well meaning and... lovely. ANYWAY it's heartwarming and I hate it.
Because, as previously stated, I have no soul.
Posted by: Alex the Odd at May 13, 2008 9:23 AM
*sticks head back in*
So it's safe? That's good. I'm not my mother-in-law (who stated this past weekend that from now on, she only will see movies with a happy ending - this in response to my desire to pop No Country for Old Men into the DVD player), but I do enjoy the heartwarming flick every now and again.
Posted by: Ariel at May 13, 2008 9:44 AM
"I think for me I actually like it less because it was massively popular (oh Godtopus, was it popular) because it contains all the elements of British life that I hate: gritty determination, overcoming adversity with a twinke in our eyes and a snappy dance routine..."
Alex, I'm starting to think there really might be something to your assertion a month or two back that we could possibly be long-lost twins. That right there is pretty much exactly why the film rubs me up the wrong way. I'm from Darlaston in the Black Country area of the West Midlands - an area noted for its contributions to industry and economy in the years immediately after the Industrial Revolution, and a town now described as 'extremely deprived' by an Ofsted report on my secondary school I once took a look at out of curiosity.
Nobody I know from around here ever worked their way from the dole queue with flashy dance moves and sheer force of cheeky-chappy charm. Hell, the last guy I know of to give it a try (a guy I went to school with by the name of Mark Rhodes) had his mother's windows smashed by the locals when he only made it to second place in Pop Idol.
Ariel: Is Little Miss Sunshine considered a heartwarmer? I liked that one...
Posted by: Dill The Devil at May 13, 2008 10:08 AM
Ah well maybe it's just because I quite like the escapism of the films, sometimes I just need to escape the gritty realism genre for just a moment!
Let's face it, as a northerner, would you really want to watch a film based on the trials and tribulations of the average scally in a average Northern town?
Posted by: complicatedj at May 13, 2008 10:30 AM
Thing is Dill knowing my Father it is entirely possible that I am genetically related to well, pretty much anyone actually (it makes picking up guys in bars a very dangerous gamble) but yes! My point - the long lost twin hypothesis is entirely plausible and now looking more and more likely.
Little Miss Sunshine is too quirky and freak filled to be truly heartwarming - for that you need regular every day folks struggling against their lot in life but never losing their senses of humour or the belief that everything will come up roses in the end.
Posted by: Alex the Odd at May 13, 2008 11:03 AM
complicatedj: I think I could be just too cynical a person to be touched by the 'heartwarmer' genre - give me relentless toil that goes unrewarded, opportunities snatched away, and the slow simmering of a lifetime of resentments any day of the week. In fact, I've just put myself in the mood to watch This Is England again - did Pajiba review that one? Largely autobiographical movie written and directed by (my fellow Midlander) Shane Meadows, about a young boy who loses his father in the Falklands War and ends up falling in with a group of skinheads, just as the racist element of that movement begins to emerge. That's my type of British film.
Posted by: Dill The Devil at May 13, 2008 12:00 PM
Have you seen 'Together' (Tilsammens)? When some friends saw it they were gushing about how truly wonderful it is, until they realised that if they described it in too glowing turns they would put us off. It's lucky they did stop telling us how wonderful the film is, so I could see it myself and appreaciate that it really is wonderful. I'd reccomend it to anyone. (Wife battering [but only a tiny bit], '70s Swedish communes, partner swapping, and a big fat happy ending).
Posted by: ChrisD at May 13, 2008 12:03 PM
Little Miss Sunshine left me with a nice, comfortable feeling at the end, and I think that's what makes a heartwarming film. (At least, in my definition.) Like, I loved Waitress, and I was happy for the character at the end, but it was bittersweet because it didn't turn out quite like I wanted. Nor did Once, which I also enjoyed immensely.
But no, the heartwarming movies I generally enjoy are like Love, Actually (comma? no comma?) - just corny enough to be enjoyable, but not so saccharine that I want to pass out.
Speaking of realistic British works, though, or the lack thereof, the novel Black Swan Green was a good read, and definitely not all "everything's comin' up roses."
Posted by: Ariel at May 13, 2008 1:26 PM
wsapnin: I feel exactly the same way about the ads so I copy and paste the review into word and read it there. Don't worry, I don't save it or anything. Am I in trouble now?
Posted by: Anne at May 13, 2008 7:02 PM
I'm still up for it. Great review, dan.
Posted by: Kevin Longrie at May 14, 2008 3:32 AM
wow. that was a very boring review.
Posted by: EricD at May 15, 2008 1:30 PM
