Leonard Maltin's 151 Best Movies You've Never Seen - Maltin, Leonard [88]
Perhaps it was their lack of star power—in movie-marquee terms—that kept this movie from being more successful, or perhaps mainstream audiences still shy away from an interracial romance. If you ask me, Lathan and Baker make an exceptionally attractive couple.
121. SON OF RAMBOW
(2008)
Directed by Garth Jennings
Screenplay by Garth Jennings
Actors:
BILL MILNER
WILL POULTER
JULES SITRUK
JESSICA STEVENSON
NEIL DUDGEON
ANNA WING
ED WESTWICK
Some movies are considered a tough sell because they don’t have a hook that advertising and marketing people can latch on to. This British import had one, but apparently moviegoers didn’t understand it…and stayed away. What’s more, the film was held back from release for one full year after Paramount acquired it at the Sundance Film Festival in 2007. Reportedly much of that time was spent in legal discussions to make sure the star and creators of First Blood (the movie that introduced Sylvester Stallone as Rambo) wouldn’t sue over this offbeat homage.
Son of Rambow is, in fact, a quirky coming-of-age movie about two alienated boys in the early 1980s. Will Proudfoot (Bill Milner) has led a sheltered life, as his family is part of a strict religious sect that forbids such worldly diversions as television; what’s more, his mother has to raise him and his siblings on her own. As a result, he finds his only escape is through drawing. One day at school he chances to meet an arrogant bully named Lee Carter (Will Poulter) who sees in Will a perfect new patsy. Enjoying the attention, Will readily submits to Lee’s demands.
It turns out that Lee also lives in a fractured household with his older brother; the parents are forever traveling and pay no attention to their children. But unlike Will, Lee goes to the movies and the new film First Blood has taken his fancy. So he borrows his brother’s home-video camera and decides to stage his own version of the action yarn—with Will as his star and stuntman.
Writer-director Garth Jennings and his producing partner Nick Goldsmith drew on their own experiences for this story. Jennings was one of those kids who tried to imitate First Blood by making movies with his friends, using the first generation of home-video equipment. He later transformed his youthful flights of fancy into a career, cofounding the production company Hammer & Tongs with Goldsmith in 1999. They built a reputation for creating visually arresting music videos and television commercials. The partners were ready to make their feature-film debut with Rambow when the opportunity arose to take on a major studio movie, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Son of Rambow became their second feature, made on a much smaller scale, with more modest ambitions.
Jennings’s screenplay captures the innocence and wonder of adolescence, as well as the adventure of amateur moviemaking. Perhaps his greatest success was finding precisely the right boys to play his main characters. Bill Milner is perfect as Will—wide eyed and vulnerable—while Will Poulter is entirely believable as the bullying Lee, who hides his insecurities under a mask of cockiness.
Son of Rambow isn’t quite like any other film I can recall about boyhood, yet its central themes of isolation, friendship, and wanting to be accepted are universal and timeless. Like many other films about growing up, I suspect it speaks most eloquently to adults who can remember the joys and sorrows of their own experiences.
122. SONGCATCHER
(2001)
Directed by Maggie Greenwald
Screenplay by Maggie Greenwald
Actors:
JANET MCTEER
AIDAN QUINN
PAT CARROLL
JANE ADAMS
GREGORY COOK
IRIS DEMENT
E. KATHERINE KERR
EMMY ROSSUM
DAVID PATRICK KELLY
Luck plays a part in any career. Filmmaker Maggie Greenwald has made exceptional movies that anyone would be proud of, but bad luck has hindered their release and kept her