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Dir. Garth Jennings

Rating: 6.1  |  0 User Reviews  |  Send to Friend

By Piers Marchant

If you think about it, about the only significant difference between a pre-teen adventure flick and a standard format romantic comedy is the gender -- and intention -- of the participants. Substitute "romantic attraction" for "friendship" and "true love" for "true friendship" and it all pretty much comes out the same: x meets y, generally from the wrong side of the tracks, so to speak; x loses y, usually due to some giant misunderstanding left over from the first act; x reunites with y and all is saved. Garth Jennings' oft-cute lark more or less follows the standard formulas, though the film is saved from complete sugarcoating by some clever bits and two excellent leads. Those leads are Will (Bill Milner), an eternally sweet and innocent kid, raised under the strict puritanical auspices of something called "The Brethren," and Lee Carter (Will Poulter), a loquacious kid with a con man's aspect and a way of getting into massive trouble. They meet when Will, sitting outside his classroom in order to avoid the TV documentary his teacher is presenting -- something his religion doesn't allow -- gets whacked in the face with a tennis ball that Lee hurls at him. Before too long, the two are embarking on an ambitious project to create their own Rambo film so Lee can enter a film contest. As is so often the case in these sorts of films, the two become best, albeit unlikely, friends, until a French exchange student, Didier (Jules Sitruk), comes in and threatens to take over the whole project. As friends, Milner, with his perpetually downcast countenance and Poulter, an expressive imp with solid comic timing, do have a striking chemistry, and the film has its moments of inspired Bill Forsyth-esque humor (when Didier exits the transport bus in front of the assembled British school kids he grabs a microphone and coolly intones "Hello, England" and, later, with perfect French arrogance, "I'm trapped in a world of boredom"), but neither element can entirely wipe away the more predictable and overly saccharine notes the film repeatedly strikes, especially at the end. It’s not that you begrudge Will and Lee their hard-earned victories, it's that you wish you could believe more in the world they inhabit -- one in which everyone gets more or less what they want.

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