‘Son of Rambow’

By John Mulderig
Catholic News Service

NEW YORK (CNS) – "Son of Rambow" (Paramount Vantage) is a rollicking but also touching chronicle of boyhood friendship set in 1980s Britain.

Reserved, introspective Will (Bill Milner) and rambunctious Lee (Will Poulter) seem an unlikely pair. But one day at school Will, the son of a puritanically religious widowed mother (Jessica Stevenson), is excused from watching an educational television program in accord with the strictures of his Amish-like sect. At the same time, Lee is, as usual, kicked out of class by his exasperated teacher. The two bond, resulting in an accidentally broken fish tank, a summons to the headmaster's office and a lasting friendship.

Lee's often absent parents leave him in the care of his dictatorial older brother, Lawrence (Ed Westwick), whose demands include Lee making bootleg videos of current movies. The sheltered Will is thus exposed to his first film – one of Sylvester Stallone's "Rambo" adventures – and becomes an instant enthusiast.

Christening himself "Son of Rambow" (he's never seen the name spelled out), Will collaborates with his new friend on a wildly frenetic sequel featuring a series of harebrained and hair-raising stunts. Didier (Jules Sitruk), an impossibly precocious, charismatically cool French exchange student, also wants to participate.

But perennial outsider Lee mistrusts the newcomer and his band of adoring disciples. As Didier, the school's Pied Piper, threatens to wrest control of the project from Lee, Will has to decide whose side to take. He also has to try to prevent his mother and the other members of "The Brethren" – a stand-in for the Plymouth Brethren, a technology-shunning Christian movement founded in Dublin in the 1820s -- from discovering his ongoing sin of moviemaking.

Writer-director Garth Jennings' warmly humorous film, which draws on his own childhood experiences, portrays the religious atmosphere as stifling enough to justify its main character's conflicted resistance and evasions. But "Son of Rambow" ends by affirming faith as well as friendship in its thoroughly affecting final scenes.

The film contains shoplifting, underage smoking, a painful accident, and occasional crude and profane and some crass language. The USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classification is A-III – adults. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is PG-13 – parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.

* Mulderig is on the staff of the Office for Film & Broadcasting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. More reviews are available online at www.usccb.org/movies.