The Greatest Trick

Hey look, I’m writing a review! Of a film! On my own film review site! (Just in case it totally dies on me, the letter ‘G’ on my keyboard is behaving very erratically, so there might be some impromptu spelling mistakes that I fail to correct. I apologise in advance)

Miles (Paul Giamatti) and Jack (Thomas Haden Church) are middle-aged, washed up wine fanatics on a trip through California’s wine region, in the week leading up to Jack’s wedding. Miles, the divorced, introspective, failing-writer-turned-teacher, just wants to taste some good wine, play some golf and enjoy the week with his friend. Jack, the bit-part actor whose best years are behind him, is determined to have some fun (read: sex) before tying the knot - and embarks on some very ill-advised romantic entanglements that his friend has to then extricate him from. The film follows them through their week, as they spend time together and apart, and evokes charm, disbelief, humour and irritation at these characters in more or less equal measure.

Giamatti and Church do an excellent job, though it really is Giamatti’s film - thankfully, as he is the more sympathetic character to follow! In fact, it’s very difficult for me to comment on anything apart from the actual characters and their story - I don’t remember the technical / directorial aspects of the film so much, as I was caught up with being annoyed with both of them! I suppose that means the director (Alexander Payne, who also wrote the screenplay) did a good job of keeping me in the story.

And here I will digress and present the reader with a spiritual quandary that I found myself in at the end of the movie; I experienced the same thing while watching Last King of Scotland, just a few nights earlier, so maybe God’s on my case… Anyway - and here I will allude heavily to the endings of both films, so look away if you don’t want them spoiled - they both presented the viewer with characters who mess up in a major way, show little to no remorse for their dumb and dangerous actions, and yet the story offers them redemption, and they take it. In LKoS, Nick Garrigan (James McAvoy), who has most definitely sinned against Idi Amin (I’ll leave the details of that out for now), is rescued from his horrific torture by a fellow doctor who dies to give him time to leave the country; in Sideways Jack’s pre-marital infidelities are flagrant and ridiculous, and get him beaten up and forced into the first act of deception in his new marriage before it’s even started. Neither of these characters show any true remorse for what they have done, but are given a way out of their mess through the sacrifices offered to them by others. Now it’s totally clear when put that way, that they could stand in for the sinner before accepting Christ - he gave himself before we had any idea of our need for salvation. And yet, something in me is annoyed and unhappy about the fact that they are redeemed (not just offered redemption) when no repentance has taken place - and sadly there is nothing in the films that tells us that from this point on they are going to be changed characters. Is this harsh on my part? Am I being legalistic and pharisaical in my lack of grace for these characters? Or is fair and true to Christian belief to expect a change in behaviour / attitude before someone is fully saved?

Comments welcome (I think!)…

Armando Iannucci’s In the Loop is a spin off from the BBC TV series The Thick of It. Essentially Yes Minister with loads of swearing, The Thick of It acquired a cult following as a scathing satire on the New Labour spin culture. In the Loop takes it’s most acerbic character Malcolm Tucker (the excellent Peter Capaldi) and places him in a painfully funny and disturbingly believable tale of political shenanigans and dodgy dossiers as the US pushes for a war in the Middle East and tries to get the UK on its side.

In addition to the brilliant Capaldi, the rest of the cast do well in their various roles, especially Tom Hollander as cowardly politician Simon Foster whose inept mutterings to the press earn Tucker’s wrath (“You sounded like a Nazi Julie Andrews!”). James Gandolfini (from the Sopranos) is also hilarious as a US general opposed to the war, Steve Coogan has an amusing cameo as one of Foster’s disgruntled constituents, and there are good supporting parts for Anna Chlumsky, David Rasche, Chris Addison, Joanna Scanlan and Zach Woods.

Armando Iannucci’s TV and radio back catalogue is an embarrassment of riches which includes Alan Partridge, Brass Eye and the monumentally brilliant The Day Today. In the Loop doesn’t quite attain that level of genius, but its still terrific stuff, with Iannucci himself in the director’s chair. In places it plays like a modern version of Dr Strangelove, but with swearing.

And herein lies my main problem with the film. The relentless, “enough-to-make-a-sailor-blush” profanity is undeniably funny at times, but I am also left with the nagging suspicion that it wasn’t entirely necessary. Yes Minister and Dr Strangelove, as well as Iannucci’s The Day Today, did much the same thing without swearing (or in the case of The Day Today, by bleeping out the worst of it). On the other hand, filthy language is such a defining characteristic of the odious Malcolm Tucker (allegedly based on Alistair Campbell), that perhaps without it his character would be nowhere near as effective.

Swear words aside, this is an absolutely merciless satire; so scathing it will leave New Labour with third degree burns. It’s often screamingly funny, but the laughter leaves a bitter taste in the mouth since it is clearly based on the farce that led the UK into war in Iraq. As a damning indictment of spineless politicians and their advisors, this is fierce stuff and highly recommended.

Simon Dillon, April 2009.

Director Tony Gilroy is perhaps best known for his Oscar nominated Michael Clayton. Not a bad little film and one that featured excellent performances from George Clooney and Tom Wilkinson. For his next film Duplicity, Gilroy is on altogether lighter territory, albeit still within the world of corporate skulduggery.

The tone here is similar to Oceans 11 or Charade, although not as good as either of the aforementioned caper classics. Clive Owen and Julia Roberts play corporate spies Ray and Claire who share a steamy past. They decide to pull off an elaborate multi-million dollar con on their respective employers, but can they trust each other?

Clive Owen is good, and Julia Roberts isn’t bad either (though not up to the standard of her more interesting Erin Brockovitch type roles). The excellent Tom Wilkinson and Paul Giamatti offer good support as Claire and Ray’s feuding bosses and there are a host of interesting bit parts from the likes of David Shumbris, Oleg Shtefanko, Kathleen Chalfant and Wayne Duvall.

The screenplay feels a little forced in the first half, but it picks up a good head of steam in the second, leading to an entertaining, moderately exciting climax. There are countless betrayals, twists and turns, each of which are progressively more implausible but that’s part of the fun. However, I did have some issues with the way it was directed. The split screen technique seemed rather forced, and on a more trivial note I really don’t need four separate shots of Nelsons Column, Big Ben, Tower Bridge, a red bus and an onscreen subtitle to tell me the location we’re seeing is London.

There are also some sexual references which may irritate some Christians, but nothing too severe. In short, this is fluff, but entertaining fluff.

Simon Dillon, March 2009

It’s rather odd to have watched two brainwashing films in one week - you might watch two war films, or two comedies, but two movies about brainwashing? That’s weird. Perhaps there’s someone secretly manipulating our Tesco DVD Rental list, with some sinister purpose that we haven’t yet worked out. Perhaps it’s a warning to be on our guard for people saying odd phrases - just in case we start losing bits of our memories…

Anyway, this Woody Allen effort, set in 1940, centres on a pair of insurance investigators, played by Allen himself (as usual - the romantic lead!) and Helen Hunt, who become unwittingly involved with a jewel thief after a visit to a hypnotism show one night. Most of the comedy, which isn’t really all that much to be honest, comes from the interplay between the two leads, who hate each other with a venom they continually express in the most expressive terms, in an attempt to pay homage to classic male-female sparring movies, such as His Girl Friday or Bringing Up Baby (hmm, both with Cary Grant - Allen doesn’t even come close to being close).

The story is watchable enough, but there is no mystery for the audience, and it has a very irritatingly repetitive jazz score - the Allen influence again. Frankly I found Hunt annoying, the eventual romance of the piece unconvincing, and both the leads miscast really. If Allen’s ego allowed him to direct someone else for once, he might start making a few half-decent movies (I’m no expert, but in recent years I don’t recall any of his movies lighting up either box offices or reviews pages). There’s better stuff out there, but at least it wasn’t as repulsive as Allen’s earlier Deconstructing Harry. Avoid that at all costs.

Since Mamma Mia! has become such a massive box office success, I decided I really ought to give it a watch. My expectations were not high, but I enjoy musicals. Singin’ in the Rain, West Side Story and Top Hat are among my all time favourites and on a more contemporary note, I thoroughly enjoyed last years Hairspray. Also, as a fan of pop music in general, I am partial to Abba and was curious to see exactly what has made this film such a hit.

I do not wish to be accused of gender prejudice, so I am going to preface this review by saying many of my favourite films are movies that could be termed “women’s pictures” to use old Hollywood vernacular. Classics like All that Heaven Allows, Peyton Place, Mildred Pierce, and of course Gone with the Wind would be among these, along with occasional more contemporary pictures such as Four Weddings and a Funeral and Bridget Jones Diary (essentially Jane Austen with lower moral standards). Admittedly contemporary favourites aimed primarily at a female audience are few and far between as generally speaking Hollywood (and Britain) seems to have given up on such films for complex reasons I shan’t go into in this review.

Anyway, to the matter at hand. Mammia Mia! is absolutely ghastly. In case that wasn’t clear enough allow me to reiterate: it is toe-curlingly, mind-bogglingly, headache-inducingly bad. It is an unwieldy mess of gargantuan proportions that didn’t even make me laugh once. At several points, I told myself it couldn’t get any worse, only for the film to reach hideous new lows. By the end of this criminal waste of celluloid, I was ready to gouge out my eyeballs. Time to name and shame those responsible: step forward director Phyllida Lloyd and writer Catherine Johnson.

The plot concerns Sophie (Amanda Seyfried), a girl living on a Greek island who on the eve of her wedding wants to find out who her father is. After reading her mother’s secret diary she discovers it could be one of three men, so she invites them all to the wedding, unknown to her mother. That is merely the hook the entire cast use as an excuse to make complete idiots of themselves. But whilst I’m all in favour of pratfalls and slapstick in silly comedy musicals, this time it simply isn’t funny. The cast use their own singing voices, but this hasn’t the charm or novelty of – for example – Woody Allen’s Everyone says I love you. In between badly choreographed and flatly directed songs, the screenplay is like an episode of a really, really bad Australian soap opera with characters to match, especially the monumentally annoying Sophie and her even more annoying boyfriend Sky (Dominic Cooper), who I found myself wanting to stab to death with a toothpick.

Performances are all over the top, but not in a good way, and only Pierce Brosnan, who should be thoroughly ashamed of himself for starring in such rubbish, emerges with an iota of credibility. The rest of the cast – Meryl Streep, Colin Firth, Julie Walters, Stellan Skarsgard et al – all look like they are having fun, but crucially it is they who are having the fun, not the audience. There is not a shred of interesting character development or depth, and the plot is painfully predictable. No, I don’t care if that’s missing the point. Call me old fashioned, but I like these things, even in such lightweight alleged entertainment. Hairspray was light as a feather, but had characters with a modicum of complexity and even tackled a serious issue (institutional racism). Defenders of Mamma Mia! will counter that it’s supposed to be escapism and that its not what happens but how it happens that’s important. Well, I’m all for escapism, but the world of Mamma Mia! is not somewhere I would like to escape into, but somewhere I would want to escape from before my brain melted. Besides, regardless of whether it’s what happens or how it happens that’s important, in either case, the film is awful.

Since this is a movie aimed primarily at a female audience, I can only urge those women who have not seen it not to subject themselves to this rubbish, and demand that films aimed at them are actually good. However, at this stage, such statements are like shutting stable doors after the horse has bolted. Mamma Mia! has made more money at the international box office than The Dark Knight.

From a Christian perspective, this film represents the latest in a drip drip trend of moral relativism. The message seems to be that it doesn’t matter who Sophie’s father is, as long as her mother had a good time when she was young sleeping with lots of men. Well, that’s all right then. Of course, Christian morality is nowhere to be seen, having been soundly rejected by all concerned. Instead they seem to have swapped it for a kind of Greek neo-Paganism (there’s a silly subplot involving Aphrodite’s fountain). And of course, the obligatory token gay couple are present and politically correct in predictably annoying fashion.

If all this makes me sound like a prudish party pooper, good. The only – and I mean only – thing that prevents me from declaring Mamma Mia! to be the Antichrist, is the fact that I like the songs. This is particularly depressing as I could have stayed at home and listened to an Abba CD in the first place. During particularly excruciating moments in this film, I silently thanked the Lord that I was not watching a Celine Dion musical. Such a horror would not merely be a sign of the impending apocalypse, like this film, but THE apocalypse.

Simon Dillon, October 2008.

After their bleak and terrifying Oscar winning masterpiece No Country for Old Men, the Coen Brothers are back in comparatively zany territory with Burn After Reading, a strange and ultimately inconsequential story. Yet being inconsequential seems to be the point and suggests they have carried over the existential pessimism of their last film.

The plot? I hope you’re paying attention. Highly strung CIA analyst Osbourne Cox (John Malkovitch) is told he cannot continue in his job on account of his drinking problem, but is offered a demotion at a lower clearance level. Angrily refusing this, he instead resigns, and tells his stuck-up domineering wife Katie (Tilda Swinton) that he plans to write his memoirs. Katie is secretly having an affair with paranoid Treasury Agent Harry Pfarrer (George Clooney) whom she is trying to bully into leaving his children’s book writer wife (who is in turn also having an affair). Harry is also having another affair with Linda Litzke (Frances McDormand), who works in a gym with spectacularly idiotic Chad Feldheimer (Brad Pitt). Linda is looking for Mr Right, and wants to improve her chances by undergoing several plastic surgery procedures, despite the fact that her boss and unnoticed admirer-from-a-distance Ted (Richard Jenkins), thinks she looks fine the way she is. Anyway, after Osbourne begins to write his memoirs, Katie secretly visits a divorce lawyer who advises her to make a copy of all the documents on their home computer to get a picture of the family finances before beginning divorce proceedings. In doing so, she inadvertently copies Osbourne’s memoirs onto a disk that include classified but not really sensitive information from his CIA days. This disk is then recopied by the divorce lawyer’s secretary who accidentally leaves a copy in the gym where Linda and Chad work. When the two of them find the disk and discover its contents, they call Osbourne to tell him he can collect it, hoping their will be a financial reward (which Linda hopes will be enough to cover the cost of the plastic surgery). However, inept communication leads to a series of misunderstandings over the telephone that ends with Linda blackmailing Osbourne and telling him to pay up if he wants the disk back. When Osbourne refuses to play ball, Linda and Chad inexplicably offer the disk to the Russians at the Russian embassy, apparently under the impression the Cold War is still on. A CIA insider at the Russian embassy reports what is going on to his superior at Langley (a hilarious and underused JK Simmons), who is so utterly baffled that he refuses to intervene. Instead, out of curiosity, he does all he can to cover up what is happening, even when people start getting murdered by mistake.

What makes Burn After Reading funny is the absurd way the plot builds around endless misunderstanding, co-incidence and outright idiocy. The ludicrously overheated plot is deliberately intended to be like an exaggerated version of a Raymond Chandler story, but as with much of the Coen’s output, the best jokes are observational moments on the absurdity of modern life rather than clever genre spoofing. For instance, one particularly delightful moment sees Linda wrestling with those monumentally awful recorded messages that ask the caller to say words aloud to get through to the correct department, making you sound like a complete idiot to anyone in the room who can only hear your side of the conversation.

Performances are all strong, especially from the imbecilic characters portrayed by Pitt and Clooney (who both have a whale of a time). That said, this spectacularly intricate pitch black comedy/tragedy of errors is a comparatively minor work for the Coen Brothers, but it’s still sufficiently dark and twisted to please those who appreciate their particular brand of offbeat, quirky cinema. As I mentioned earlier, this film shares No Country for Old Men’s despair at the futility of human endeavour – a worldview I believe to be spiritually false, not to mention at odds with their earlier output. Burn After Reading may be thematically similar to – say – Fargo, but it lacks that films warm humanity personified in the central figure of Frances McDormand’s pregnant police officer. Here, there are no characters of any redeeming moral ideology (give or take Ted). That combined with a profanity laden screenplay and occasional brutal violence makes it impossible for me to recommend this film from a Christian perspective, but its still one Coen completists will not want to miss.

Simon Dillon, October 2008.

Ben Stiller’s latest comedy satire Tropic Thunder ought to have been a classic given the amount of money spent on it. Unfortunately, I didn’t laugh nearly as much as I would have liked, and therefore took a much dimmer view of the comic but gruesome violence, profanity, and general insanity. John Landis pulled a similar, albeit cleaner, PG rated trick in 1986 with Three Amigos, and although that was no classic, it’s a better film.

To be fair, the premise is good. A bunch of egotistical actors making a war film are given a harsh dose of reality when accidentally left in the middle of a genuine war, all the time thinking they are still filming. The lead actors – Ben Stiller, Jack Black, Jay Baruchel, Brandon T Jackson and especially Robert Downey Jr – are all good, and there are amusing cameos from the likes of Steve Coogan and a near unrecognisable Tom Cruise.

There are also some very funny moments, particularly at the beginning with faux trailers that introduce us to the various actors. The high levels of bloody violence seen in recent war films are also spoofed to amusing effect, and one bit in the middle involving a Panda had me in genuine hysterics. But the movie is way too long, and feels bloated.

The problem with reviewing a film like Tropic Thunder for a moral/spiritual perspective, is that in saying what I must say – ie that it has no redeeming value whatsoever – will turn off one audience, and turn on another. A certain recipient of these epistles told me that whenever I say I cannot in good conscience recommend a particular film, it automatically goes to the top of his must-see list. Therefore, this person now has another film he will go out of his way to view, whereas many of the rest of you will no doubt avoid it on account of its filthy language, gruesome (if occasionally amusing) violence, and general unpleasantness. Personally, I would be more forgiving if I had laughed more, but unfortunately Tropic Thunder is patchy at best.

Simon Dillon, October 2008.

I saw In Bruges expecting another violent, self-consciously hip swear-fest along similar lines to the works of Guy Ritchie, whose films I do not care for (even the bafflingly popular Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels). I was therefore pleasantly surprised to find that not only did it go some way to restore respectability to the term “British gangster film”, but it also made me want to visit Bruges. Until now my impression of Belgium was basically a big flat motorway with some service stations located on the way to more interesting countries. However, the use of locations in this film - beautiful medieval buildings, churches and so forth – made me want to pay another visit, especially at Christmas time.

The plot involves Irish gangster odd couple Ray (Colin Farrell) and Ken (Brendan Gleeson), who are sent by their boss Harry (Ralph Fiennes) to Bruges to hide out following a hit that went pear-shaped. They are supposed to lay low, but their trip is complicated by Ray’s involvement with small time drug dealer Chloe (Clemense Poesy), her amusingly inept boyfriend, and a racist dwarf who is acting in a bad movie inspired by Nic Roegg’s 1973 horror film Don’t Look Now.

Performances are all good, and Ralph Fiennes cockney accent was surprisingly convincing. Although In Bruges isn’t strictly a comedy, writer/director Martin McDonagh’s profane but blackly comical screenplay generates more laughs than most alleged comedies. The jokes are politically incorrect but hilarious. Gallows humour banter between Ray and Ken, endless gags about dwarfs and a stand out scene involving a fight Ray provokes with a Canadian will delight audiences with strong stomachs.

But despite the laughs, this has the feel of a classic tragedy, almost Shakespearean in construction. Occasionally recalling Carol Reed’s 1947 classic Odd Man Out, particularly in the final scenes, In Bruges falls short of greatness due to its reliance on co-incidence to drive the climax. But the mixture of pitch black comedy and gruesome violence doesn’t feel awkward, as it does in similar contemporary works (the afore-mentioned Guy Ritchie’s back catalogue for instance). In fact, In Bruges even has something to say, if not necessarily anything very profound, about the nature of sin, repentance and the possibility of redemption. Essentially it’s about a man struggling with the guilt of a terrible deed, and wrestling with whether or not he can change.

However, for most Christian audiences, no amount of pseudo-spiritual musings about life, death, heaven and hell will be able to offset the graphic bloody violence and very strong language (f-words and worse throughout more than earn its 18 certificate). Therefore, although I must guiltily confess to thoroughly enjoying the film, I recommend approaching with extreme caution.

Simon Dillon, April 2008.

Disney’s love affair with London (see Mary Poppins, Peter Pan, Bedknobs & Broomsticks etc.) lasted from the 1950s to, arguably, the 1980s (with Basil The Great Mouse Detective), and this entry, made in 1975 is largely throwaway, moderately amusing now I’m not a child, faintly racist but mostly harmless. My kids are watching it right now for the third time in as many days, which can’t be bad for a film of more than thirty years where everyone speaks in that quaint, Queen’s English jolly-hockey-sticks manner - but then my kids have resolutely NOT been raised on a diet of talking CG animals, with the exception of Nemo, so they’ve no reason to expect that kind of a film.

The plot is peculiar though - Lord Southmere (Derek Nimmo) returns to London from China having stolen a microfilm, and as soon as he re-enters the country is chased by Chinese spies (led by Hnup Wan - Peter Ustinov) to get it back. He resorts to hiding the film on a dinosaur in the Natural History Museum, and just before he is apprehended by the Chinese bumps into his former nanny (played with dignity and poise throughout by Helen Hayes) and her nanny friend, who he charges with finding the film and keeping it from the Chinese. When Wan decides to steal the dinosaur, the nannies get the jump on them, and take it off for a thrilling chase around London.

The aspect that sticks out like a mile now I’m an adult re-watching it is the fact that all the Chinese are played by Englishmen (Ustinov, Clive Revill, Bernard Bresslaw) in shocking amounts of make-up and very silly accents, especially Ustinov. Heidi and I wondered yesterday whether our parents were equally uncomfortable about it, but came to the conclusion that this actually possibly makes it less racist. If the jokes that are made at the expense of the Chinese and the silliness they get involved in were directed at genuine Chinese actors, it would be a great deal more uncomfortable - thankfully every adult watching knows this is a piece of monumental silliness (especially when it is revealed what is actually on the microfilm). And kids? Well, the setting, style and language of the film makes it so far removed from their reality that I don’t think one could accuse the film of promoting unhelpful attitudes towards the Chinese and have that accusation stand.

It’s fun and silly, harmless and good-hearted, and features some great music (which my kids are now dancing to while watching the DVD menu!). Great for the holidays.

Many years ago, when I showed my younger brothers the 50’s sci-fi B-movie The Blob, it made a tremendous impact on their impressionable minds, and they promptly decided to produce their own hugely imaginative stage version. Son of Rambow (spelt “Rambow” to avoid copyright issues) has a similar premise: two boys decide to film their own version of Rambo after viewing a pirate video of First Blood (ie the original Rambo film, not the rubbish sequels). Whimsical, nostalgic and unashamedly sentimental, this will strike a chord with anyone who grew up in the 1980’s.

The friendship between these two very different boys forms the core of the film. Will is from a strict Plymouth Brethren background (an ultra-legalistic Christian group who don’t allow film, television or pop music). He befriends Lee, who is always in trouble at school, and the two of them form an unlikely bond as they set about producing their own version of the Sylvester Stallone classic.

Partly autobiographical in nature, the story is loosely based on childhood incidents from writer/director Garth Jennings. This is his second feature, and visually it draws heavily on his experience helming some of the sharpest pop videos of recent years (including Blur’s Coffee and TV). The many slapstick gags, amusing characters and increasingly dangerous stunts are executed to hilarious effect.

Performance wise, the two leads, Bill Milner (Will) and Will Poulter (Lee), are both completely convincing. They are ably supported by the likes of Zofia Brooks, Neil Dudgeon and other TV names. The cinematography and editing are slick, with great use of animation to illustrate Will’s fertile imagination. Obviously, no film of this nature would be complete without a cracking pop soundtrack, and the likes of Duran Duran, The Cure, Gary Numan and Depeche Mode are all used to good effect.

The narrative loses focus somewhat towards the end, and becomes increasingly improbable as virtually the whole school gets involved in the production. There are also some anachronisms that will be noticed by nit-pickers, since the film is set in 1982 and features at least two songs playing in the background that weren’t released until later. But in spite of these flaws, the film remains a warm and engaging experience, albeit one peppered with mild swearing. Lee in particular blasphemes a great deal, but this is true to his character, especially considering his background. Speaking of backgrounds, both Lee and Will have well developed back stories involving absent parents, and although this has become a storytelling cliché, it’s a cliché that’s used to good dramatic effect.

On a spiritual level, the film also provides a surprisingly penetrating insight into the crushingly oppressive nature of legalistic religion, especially when inflicted on innocent children. It would be inappropriate for me to tell my bizarre life story in what is supposed to be a film review, but having experienced something similar to what Will goes through in my own early childhood, the scenes where he was excluded from certain school activities brought up painful memories that can only be understood by those who have been through such things. Thankfully, like Will, I also had an awakening similar to his experience watching First Blood when the cultish church we attended collapsed and I was suddenly allowed to do all manner of things that had previously been prohibited. Colossians chapter 1 verse 16 says “All things were created by him and for him.” All things include film, television and pop music. Therefore, to say all film, television and pop music is wrong is to deny the Bible. These things are not evil in themselves, it depends whether they are used to promote good or evil. That is where legalistic denominations completely miss the point in their “everything fun is wrong” approach to life. The God I know simply isn’t like that.

Above all, this is a celebration of childhood innocence; a nostalgic portrayal of the 80’s how people of my age remember it. There are no discussions of Thatcherism or the Miner’s strike. Instead, it’s a wistful reminder of a bygone era where children were allowed to play outside, use their imaginations, and create amazing adventures for themselves. Son of Rambow is no masterpiece, but it’s so entertaining it’s impossible not to recommend, especially to people who remember tear-off ring-pull cans of Coke, hilarious 80’s fashions and expressions like “skill”.

Simon Dillon, April 2008.