Son of Rambow

Plot

Will Proudfoot (Bill Milner) is a quiet and shy 11-year-old boy, and comes from a family that belongs to the strict Plymouth Brethren church. Will is forbidden from watching films or television and is made to leave his classroom when the teacher puts on a documentary. In the corridor, he meets Lee Carter (Will Poulter), the 13-year old worst-behaved boy in school, thrown out of another class for bad behaviour. They accidentally break a fish bowl in the corridor; Lee volunteers to take the blame, pretending that the punishment is torture, in exchange for Will's watch, which belonged to his dead father. Moreover, Lee demands that Will performs the stunts in a film Lee is making with home video equipment owned by his bullying older brother, Lawrence, which Lawrence uses in his video bootlegging enterprise. He intends to enter the Screen Test Young Film-Makers' Competition.

Will accepts, after accidentally seeing the film First Blood at Lee's house while hiding from Lawrence. He becomes very enthusiastic, and plays several dangerous action scenes, culminating in the two boys becoming 'blood brothers' after Lee saves Will from drowning. Lee finds Will's sketch book, full of colourful and glorious ideas, and starts to incorporate some of them into his film script. The two become best friends, but Will has to keep it secret from his family and the increasingly interfering Brother Joshua of the Brethren, who clearly has designs on his mother.

French exchange students arrive, of whom the suave Didier Revol becomes very popular. After finding Will's sketch book, he asks Will if he and his acolytes can play in the film, and Will agrees. Didier reveals that he has always wanted to be an actor. This mushrooms into the whole school being part of the production, and Will being included with the cool sixth-formers. Lee does not like this, as he is no longer in control, and finally quits after a fight with Will during filming of the last sequence, which takes place at a disused power station. After Will becomes trapped when part of the unstable structure collapses due to Didier's carelessness, and the entire school/crew run away, Lee returns to rescue his friend, but uses the excuse that he has come to collect his brother's camera. He too gets hurt, and has to go to hospital. Lawrence visits him, but is angry about the fact that the camera is broken.

Will's mother, from whom he has struggled to hide his activities, finally realises that her son must be allowed to be himself and her family leaves the Brethren. The film is never submitted to the competition as they miss the deadline. The French students leave, and while Didier was popular and worshipped in Britain, his own school-mates mock him, and he is actually lonely and isolated. When Lawrence looks at Lee's footage he is impressed, and he sees Lee's rant at Will defending Lawrence's neglect and bullying, which was accidentally filmed. With Will's help, he adds a part in which he acts himself — including a reply message for his brother. When Lee leaves the hospital, he is brought to a cinema by surprise. His film is shown before the main feature (much to the enjoyment of the audience) and the two boys reunite.

Production

Son of Rambow is a project that Garth Jennings and Nick Goldsmith — collectively known as Hammer & Tongs — worked on for some years. Its development was interrupted when they were asked to make The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and it is their second major feature film. It was inspired by Jennings' own experiences as a child in the 1980s, when video equipment first became available to the public, and the film recreates the atmosphere of an English comprehensive school of the time, using a soundtrack of both familiar and lesser known pop tracks from the era. The film was shot primarily in the English town of Berkhamsted, and the nearby Ashridge Estate owned and managed by the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty Hertfordshire: featuring Ashlyns School and The Rex, a recently refurbished listed Art Deco cinema which had been left derelict between 1989 and 2004.

The two roads where both boys live are approximately 1200 metres apart, being located next to Berkhamsted Castle. They are the two most exclusive residential roads in the town. The film also shot at the Richborough Power Station in Sandwich, which was then disused. The film includes a vintage clip of Jan Pinkava winning the BBC Screen Test competition. The minor role of Danny, an acolyte of Didier, a glamorous French exchange student, is played by Stanley Kubrick's grandson, Sam Kubrick-Finney. The film includes excerpts from First Blood and is endorsed by Sylvester Stallone, the star of the Rambo series.

At the very end of the closing credits, Carter's voice-over points out that "Rambo" is not spelled with a "w". Will replies, "Oh OK," and Carter quickly adds, "It was still good though." The UK distributor, Optimum Releasing, is owned by StudioCanal - which owns ancillary rights to the first three Rambo films. The American distributor, Paramount Vantage, is a division of Paramount Pictures - which owns TV and digital rights to said films in North America (with the former being sublicensed to Trifecta Entertainment & Media).

Critical reception

Son of Rambow received generally favourable reviews from critics. As of 3 June 2017, the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported that 74% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 116 reviews. Metacritic reported the film had an average score of 66 out of 100, based on 29 reviews. The film appeared on several critics' top ten lists of the best films of 2008. Both Kimberly Jones of The Austin Chronicle and Ty Burr of The Boston Globe named it their eighth best, and Marc Savlov of The Austin Chronicle named it his ninth. David Morrell, the author who created the character of John Rambo, called the film "charming".

Home media release

Son of Rambow was released on DVD and Blu-ray in the United Kingdom on 11 August 2008, and on DVD in the United States on 26 August 2008.