WASHINGTON (Map, News) - The intentionally misspelled “Son of Rambow” is a sweet though minor English mix with a no-name junior cast. Part broad coming-of-age comedy, part dysfunctional-family drama, it’s also an affectionate homage to early 1980s nostalgia and a certain bandolier-laden Vietnam vet who looks an awful lot like Sly Stallone in a headband.

Anyone who has ever really adored a movie may be able to relate to how two disaffected boys bond over and escape from their childhood pain through their shared love of “First Blood.”

The product of a strict religious sect, the shy and clueless Will (Bill Milner) has been cut off from modern culture until he meets the reviled school ruffian Carter (Will Poulter). Essentially left to raise himself by an absent mother, Carter acts out until he finds an unlikely ally in his opposite number Will. Soon the boys will find status and brotherhood together when they set out to enter an amateur filmmakers’ contest with their own rudimentary, all-child Rambo sequel.

With its droll homemade movie-within-the-movie production values and its theme about cinematic passion, “Son of Rambow” brings to mind the recent Jack Black satire “Be Kind Rewind.” But Brit writer-director Garth Jennings (responsible for the unwatchable dud “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”) infuses today’s view of big-screen kitsch with a bit more heart. Because even though the plot and backstories seem contrived, the relationship between this pair of lonely children does turn out in the end to be unexpectedly touching. The two inexperienced, young actors playing the protagonists communicate a natural vulnerability. So you can’t help but care about them.    

Also enriching the middling piece is its observant subplot about the weird hierarchy of life in early adolescence. A French exchange student, Didier (Jules Sitruk), introduces New Wave fashion and cool Gallic attitude to the movie’s staid little academic outpost of pastoral England. In the process, the comical character comments on the exquisite torture we all can recall when peer approval and boy-girl discovery loomed large.

If only this “Rambow” had more depth and narrative surprises in its arsenal.  

‘Son of Rambow’

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