STUDIO: Paramount
RELEASE DATE: August 26, 2008
STARRING: Bill Milner, Will Poulter, and Jules Sitruk
WRITTEN BY: Garth Jennings
DIRECTED BY: Garth Jennings
FEATURES: Commentary by the Director, Producer, and Cast
"Aron" - Garth Jennings' Original Short Film That Inspired Son of Rambow
The Making of Son of Rambow
And More

Son of Rambow is a tough film for me to write about. I want to love it. I want to go with the quote from AICN on the back and effusively exclaim, "One of the most enjoyable films of the year." And I honestly don't begrudge anyone who thinks so. Sometimes you see movies that you know aren't good and are baffled that anyone could think otherwise. Son of Rambow is not one of those situations. As much as I painfully gave the film a minor thumbs down in theaters, I recognize why people fell in love with it. The young cast is charismatic and effective. The theme of the film is one that I adore - creativity builds community. But I can't get over the final act of Son of Rambow with its left turn into real issues of life and death and a "heartwarming ending" that feels manipulative. Son of Rambow works much better at home, where those kind of writing transgressions can be forgiven and where the strengths of Garth Jennings' film come more easily to the forefront. A decent collection of special features in this Best Buy exclusive (to buy...you can rent it anywhere) barely nudges Son of Rambow from a marginal thumbs down in theaters to a marginal thumbs up on the home market.

Two people that know a lot about the unifying power of creativity are writer/director Garth Jennings and producer Nick Goldsmith, more commonly known as Hammer & Tongs. As two of the most influential music video producers of the last decade (they shot amazing clips for Pulp, Blur, R.E.M., Vampire Weekend and more), Hammer & Tongs broke a lot of the rules of the medium. Their left-of-center technique carried over to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and is there in the first two acts of Son of Rambow. Bill Milner and Will Poulter star as Will Proudfoot and Lee Carter, respectively, a pair of young boys who long to blow things up and jump off of roofs but couldn't be from more opposite sides of the tracks. Will comes from an ultra-religious family with too much parental interference while Lee comes from a too liberal family with parents and a brother who barely know he's alive. In classic movie archetypes, Will is "the nerd" and Lee is "the bully". But even though it may be for different reasons, the two are both outcasts - one because he's too poor and too nice and the other because he's too rich and too mean. After the naive Will sees First Blood, he becomes obsessed with action movie and forms a creative partnership with his outcast friend, quickly going from zeros to heroes in school. In a town where there's not much to do, everyone wants to be involved in Will and Lee's movies.

When Son of Rambow focuses on the power of cinema to inspire other people to create visions of their own, it totally works. I believe that there are kids out there right now seeing an action movie like First Blood for the first time and getting fired up to make a shoot-em-up of their own. But near the end of Son of Rambow, Jennings pushes the story too far and it breaks. Without giving anything away, there's an action scene with real life-and-death stakes and a movie that has felt light-on-its-feet crashes to the ground. To be blunt, I just didn't buy it. And once the air is let out of the tires of Rambow, the entire message of the movie collapses. The final act feels like a cheat, turning a movie that was about creativity into a story of best friends that the rest of the screenplay just doesn't adequately set up. Like a lot of those home movies we made as children, Son of Rambow has the best of intentions and a great set-up, but the ending falls apart.

It seems appropriate that a movie Son of Rambow works better at home than it did in theaters. Not only are the storytelling flaws easier to overlook, but Paramount has put together an above average release considering the arthouse nature of the release. The picture and audio are never distracting although we're quickly reaching a point where every title, even one like Son of Rambow, should be released on Blu-Ray and this one is not. More remarkable is the excellent commentary by Hammer & Tongs with his cast and the short film that inspired Son of Rambow. It's very cool to be able to see where a movie came from creatively and then hear the people who made it talk about the finished product. Will Proudfoot and Lee Carter fell in love with First Blood. It's easy to see kids their age fall in love with the DVD for Son of Rambow.