Son of Rambow
Summer 2008 Summer Films series
Sunday, July 27, 2008 at 8:00pm
Acadia Cinema's Al Whittle Theatre
450 Main Street, Wolfville, NS
Directed by Garth Jennings
Screenplay by Garth Jennings
Starring Jessica Stevenson, Charlie Thrift, Will Poulter, Bill Milner, and Jules Sitruck
Rated PG ·
1h 35m
United Kingdom
English
A runaway audience smash at the Sundance Film Festival, Son of Rambow is a hilariously fresh and visually inventive take on friendship, family, film heroes and the death-defying adventures of growing up in the video age. It all begins in 1980s Britain, when young Will Proudfoot, raised in isolation among The Brethren, a puritanical religious sect in which music and TV are strictly forbidden, encounters something beyond his wildest fantasies: a pirated copy of Rambow: First Blood. His virgin viewing of the iconic thriller blows his mind – and rapidly expanding imagination – wide open. Now, Will sets out to join forces with the seemingly diabolical school bully, Lee Carter, to make their own action epic, devising wildly creative, on-the-fly stunts, not to mention equally elaborate schemes for creating a movie of total commitment and non-stop thrills while hiding out from The Brethren. But when school popularity finally descends on Will and Lee in the form of, oui, the super-cool French exchange student, Didier Revol, their remarkable new friendship and precious film are pushed, quite literally, to the breaking point…
Filmed in a creatively mad-cap, homemade style with a mostly amateur cast and a wry, comic-tinged nostalgia, creative visionaries Garth Jennings and Nick Goldsmith, AKA Hammer & Tongs (Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy), manage to capture both the agony and the giddy ecstasy of a camcorder childhood with humor, poignancy and a rousing dose of cinematic panache.