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'Son of Rambow'

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Rafer Guzmán, John Anderson, GARY GOLDSTEIN / Los Angeles Times

May 2, 2008

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In this funny, eccentric kids' film, writer-director Garth Jennings ("The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy") casts two terrific newcomers (Bill Milner and Will Poulter, 11 and 13, respectively) as Will Proudfoot, a sunny-faced kid bound to a restrictive religious order called The Brethren, and Lee Carter, the rebellious son of a rich, absent mother, who embark on the delightfully odd project of remaking a Sylvester Stallone flick. Armed with a VHS camcorder and homemade props, the two misfits inadvertently create a mini-Hollywood within their school and soon find themselves schmoozing with the popular kids. (One clever scene depicts a bunch of fashionably debauched youths snorting scented erasers.) The film occasionally loses its own plot but always retains its sense of magic by staying firmly rooted in the heads of its two young heroes, who view the outside world with wonder but retreat into inner worlds when necessary. Those worlds collide, blur and finally co-exist, which, when you think about it, is pretty much what it means to grow up.

SON OF RAMBOW (PG-13).1:36 (some smoking and smooching). At AMC Loew's Lincoln Square Cinemas 13, Angelika Film Center, Manhattan. Coming next month to Huntington's Cinema Arts Centre. - Rafer Guzmán