Will (Bill Milner) is a young member of an ultra-conservative religious sect in early 1980s England. He is banned from participating in most aspects of modern life, to the point that he must leave his classroom and sit in the hallway when a documentary is screened. He escapes through massively complex and imaginative doodles in a spiral notebook. During one of these hallway times, he encounters Lee Carter (Will Poulter), a Dennis The Menace-type who always seems to be in trouble. Impressed by Will’s doodles, Lee takes the shy boy under his wing. Lee lives with his older brother, Lawrence (Ed Westwick) in a retirement home owned by their mother and step-father. His parents are never home, leaving Lawrence in charge, who treats Lee like his butler rather than his brother. Lee hides Will from Lawrence in a storage room, where Will proceeds to watch the entirety of First Blood, which Lee has recently pirated from a local theater. Will is inspired by this experience and he and Lee proceed to make their own sequel: Son of Rambow.
Escaping from your life is so much easier as a child. Sure, you can pretend you are an action hero as an adult and daydream about saving the world, but people look at you funny when you’re jumping around in your office and declaring war on all evil-doers. Kids, though, get a pass, and they should. Being able to act out these fantasies is cathartic and helps young people deal with all that’s going on around them. For Will and Lee, their experience of making Son of Rambow exposes the emotions swirling around their family lives and deal with some very deep personal conflicts. Lee’s misbehavior is simply a reflection of the frustration he is experiencing with his own life, while Will finds a release for his imagination through cinema. The film is touching in how it portrays pre-teens dealing with difficult emotions and establishing their own identities, but doesn’t devolve into melodrama. This is a good movie.
4/5