Imagine This- Son of Rambow

I love coming across little film gems, and this week thanks to the Netflix DVD service (yes, I still use it- and they will pull those red envelopes out of my cold, dead hands) I stumbled onto delightful British indie, Son of Rambow (2007).

I'm not particularly drawn to most childhood best friends flicks (unless there's a body ala Stand by Me (1986)), but this tale of two misfits really made me misty. Rambow is like Wes Anderson set Rushmore (1998) in an English school without his trademark aestheticism. Young Will Proudfoot (gangly Bill Milner) has a very active artist's imagination- which isn't that big a deal- until you realize he is being raised in one of those religious cults that doesn't allow contact with modern technology.

So while the other kids get to watch a video in class, Will sits in the hall doodling fantastical cartoons in his bible. That's where he meets school ne'er-do-well Lee Carter (the fiendishly deviant Will Poulter) who immediately recognizes a good mark when he sees one. Lee cons and guilts Will into starring as the "stuntman" in the film he's making for a young person's film contest- but once Will gets a gander at Lee's bootleg video of First Blood, an obsession is born.

Will's imagination takes flight (along with a dog statue attached to a kite) and the two never-belongs use a video camera to expand their worlds and their friendship. Visiting French foreign language student Didier Revol (appropriately gender indistinct Jules Sitruk) inserts his cool self into the film and the boys experience their version of art vs. popularity.

The film never dips too deeply into ooey gooey friendship- just enough to make us feel the loneliness that these two boys desperately wish to fill. Director and writer Garth Jennings keeps it light with wry Eighties nostalgia and imaginative blendings of illustration and VHS recording. The underground new wave club where kids don eyeliner, drink Coke with Pop Rocks, and dance to Siouxsie and the Banshees is a magical place that I wish had existed for me.

And kids smoke. Awesome.