"Son of Rambow": Looking to Rambo for a little escape

If it's hard to imagine a Sylvester Stallone movie as a formative element of your youth, then you weren't raised in a repressive cult. Also, if you wore a bandanna in the '80s and were not Mike Reno from Loverboy, the statute of limitations has probably expired.

But in 1982 England, a bootleg copy of "First Blood" has a powerful effect on 11-year-old Will Proudfoot (Bill Milner). Tactile and artistic, he's bursting for an outlet but forbidden by the rules of the Plymouth Brethren religious sect from watching TV or doing much at all that's fun.

Enter Lee Carter (Will Poulter), the school's relentless hellion, who wants to make a movie with his camcorder for a TV contest. Since young boys denied toy guns will whittle them out of soap like little John Dillingers, it doesn't take much for Lee to convince Will to be his leading man in a Rambo knockoff, complete with daredevil stunts worthy of a "Calvin & Hobbes" strip.

A distant cousin of "Be Kind Rewind," "Son of Rambow" is a coming-of-age comedy that's notably uncondescending and filled with mischief guaranteed to draw the disapproval of control-freak watchdog ninnies. In other words, it gets some things right about being a kid.

English writer-director Garth Jennings and producer Nick Goldsmith (known as "Hammer & Tongs") made 2005's "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," and this scaled-down and more personal tale is a universe away from that, focusing on friendship, the creative urge as escape, the allure of a powerful male fantasy figure to a fatherless boy. (Some of us had James Bond instead.)

As much of a miserable outcast in his own way as Will, Lee is more or less enslaved to his bully of an older brother because of absentee parents, and stuck doing chores in the family's rest home.

On their furtive and kind of dangerous moviemaking adventures, the puny Will dresses in a bandanna and tank top while Lee goes all John Huston on him behind the camera — and dons a beret for the Col. Trautman role.

Conflict comes from two sources: a supercool French student named Didieir (Jules Sitruk) with big hair, a Michael Jackson jacket and an entourage, whose involvement threatens the young blood brothers' friendship; and the jerk (perfectly named Neil Dudgeon) courting Will's struggling single mom (Jessica Stevenson), a stock bad guy who threatens to toss them out of the Brotherhood if the boy doesn't cool it with the dancing — hang on, that's "Footloose." You get the idea.

Milner and Poulter are a lot of fun to watch, a pair of first-timer naturals who don't reek of Dakota Fanning Young Actorliness. But their shtick gets driven into the ground, and the movie seems long at 96 minutes. Also, the big emotional wallop at the end drips with some sap and smacks way too much of "Cinema Paradiso." But if you watch a bootleg version, how can you complain?

Mark Rahner: 206-464-8259 or mrahner@seattletimes.com

Copyright © The Seattle Times Company