Son Of Rambow

3:12pm Thursday 3rd April 2008

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Son Of Rambow (12A) **** - Neil Dudgeon, Jessica Hynes, Bill Milner, Will Poulter, Ed Westwick and Eric Sykes.

WHAT seems to be, on the surface at least, an initially frothy parody of the Rambo movies, turns into something far richer and wholly satisfying.

The Son Of Rambow, by writer/director Garth Jennings, is an emotionally-charged gem of a movie with plenty to say about family and true camaraderie.

Jennings' follow-up to his interesting debut The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, takes us back to the Britain of the early 1980s.

Will Proudfoot (Bill Milner) is a rather subdued and likeable 11-year-old with an overactive imagination who is a member of a religious sect.

United by a love of Rambo: First Blood, he teams up with another troubled boy in the form of Lee Carter (Will Poulter) who is from wrong side of the tracks.

Both previously loners from broken homes, the pair spend the summer roaming the countryside shooting their own Rambo movies.

Lee thinks salvation lies in winning BBC's Screen Test film-making competition while Will, who gets an eye-full of Sly's "heroics" through grainy pirate video images, is the star and stuntman of their epic movies.

Never dull, Son Of Rambow is more than a little special.