Imagination helps boys defy their environment in 'Son of Rambow'

Wide-eyed Will Proudfoot (Bill Milner), a meek child in an austere religious sect that shuns modern media, lets his imagination run wild in hidden cartoons and fantastic stories colorfully scribbled in the pages of his Bible and school textbooks. Sneering Lee Carter (Will Poulter) is a school "devil child" and petty thief whose mother has all but abandoned him and whose brother has turned him into a household servant and whipping boy.

They're unlikely buddies born of convenience (on Lee's part) and naiveté (that would be Will) but forged in shared joys as they team up to shoot an amateur movie on home video, circa 1982.

Perhaps the most ingeniously imaginative element in "Son of Rambow," a film exploding with imagination (some of it scrawled directly over the film in animated expressions of Will's private world), is its very conceit. A viewing of "First Blood" (on a bootleg video, of all things) opens the floodgates of Will's creativity, inspiring him to turn his private stories and imagery into a fantasy rescue of an absent father: a wild war movie by way of "The Wizard of Oz."

Writer/director Garth Jennings captures the innocent ecstasy of boys discovering the elemental power of cinema and the unfettered play of imagination with disarming humor. And he gives the boys a cartoonish invulnerability that falters only when their private world is invaded by competing egos (notably a French exchange student who becomes the local king of new wave cool).

There are a few scenes that don't ring emotionally true, usually involving the sudden awareness or uncharacteristic generosity of previously oblivious adults, but they are easily forgiven in the richness of Jennings' remembrance of childhood creativity and limitless possibilities.

"Son of Rambow" soars when the boys defy the frustrations of their lives through their art and play, rewriting their own stories with a fantasy of cinematic triumph that is real enough to them.