Son of Rambow in the UK.

The Telegraph's Tim Robey finds Son of Rambow to be "a sweet, slight and vaguely disappointing movie.... If it weren't so unrelaxed and eager to please, this might have pleased a lot more."

"Word-of-mouth is reportedly building up behind this amiable British film by writer-director Garth Jennings about a couple of moviestruck kids, marooned in the bland 1980s suburbs, who set out to make their own amateur video sequel to Rambo," notes the Guardian's Peter Bradshaw. "I really wanted to like it, and there are some laughs, but the film doesn't fully earn our sentimental indulgence, and there is a persistent sort of Britfilm lameness, 2-D characterisation and soft-focus comedy."

Updated through 4/6.

"While the script's whimsical humour recalls Gregory's Girl, the visual style is very bold, very Rushmore," writes Ryan Gilbey in the New Statesman. "Just as historians will nod approvingly if the bodices in a period drama have been sewn together with the correct stitching, so anyone who grew up in the 70s and 80s will be oohing and aahing like it's Bonfire Night during Son of Rambow, marvelling at how the film-makers have got every detail just so."

"There are beautiful observations in here, about the immersiveness, the everyday cruelty and the casual homoerotica of school life," writes Kevin Maher in the London Times. "Occasionally, though, the film-makers’ belief in the wonderment of the process blinds them to dramatic complexities. The ending, in particular, feels as if it has emerged from the pages of a screenwriting manual, rather than out of the reality of their lovingly created characters."

For Time Out's Ben Walters, this is "a schoolboy yarn with a bracing emotional honesty that packs a real kick.... Backyard remakes are very much of the moment - think Michel Gondry's Be Kind Rewind - but Son of Rambow integrates its slapstick genre pastiche into a thoughtful story about peer pressure, neglect and yearning." Also, a list of movies set in London's suburbs.

"The chief pleasure here lies in the two talented young actors [Will Poulter and Bill Milner], both entirely at ease in their contrasting parts," writes Derek Malcolm in the Evening Standard. "They carry Son of Rambow, with the adults trailing behind in rather one-dimensional parts."

This "rites-of-passage picture has wit and warmth to start, tracing an Artful Dodger/Oliver relationship between the boys and identifying in both an absent father," writes the Independent's Anthony Quinn. "It becomes rather lost halfway, though."

The Telegraph's David Gritten talks with Jennings and Nick Goldsmith; so do Jason Solomons (Observer) and Andrea Hubert (Guardian).

Earlier: Reviews from Sundance.

Updates, 4/6: "Son of Rambow is the most delightful British comedy about school life since Bill Forsyth's Gregory's Girl," writes the Observer's Philip French.

Nicholas Barber talks with Jessica Hynes for the Independent.

Posted by dwhudson at April 4, 2008 11:26 AM