Cynical Cinema

I don’t know why Alliance Films waited until tomorrow to release ESPN’s Playmakers.  The complete series comes out tomorrow just before the NFL season begins.  As an NFL fanatic, and a lover of this series, I would have really liked to have it come out three months ago when I was starved for football.  But tomorrow, you can pick up this series and get yourself in gear for the upcoming season.  Playmakers is a compelling drama about a football team in constant turmoil.  Many real-life issues get the ESPN treatment here in the show.  For example, the star running back who has a drug problem, and later becomes implicated in a shooting at a strip club.  Pacman Jones, anyone?

The backup running back, who used to be the star, is frustrated.  A star linebacker is seeing a therapist after crippling an opponent with a borderline hit.  The kicker (Pat Mastroianni, the kid who played Joey Jeremiah on Degrassi) is suffering from a lack of confidence.  There is the gay player who gets outed.  And of course there are the coaches, who turn a blind eye to steroid and drug use, who exhibit obvious favouritism to the star players over the role players, and the people who hang around football and try to leech off the stars.  A tense drama, compelling stories and characters, and football.  That’s three things I love.  And this is one series I like.

The Jeff Corwin Experience is a show on Animal Planet starring a Crocodile Hunter type guy who visits exotic locations, seeking out exotic animals, then picks them up and shows them to the camera.  The first season comes out on DVD tomorrow, September 2nd, from Alliance Films, and starts out in Borneo.  Corwin finds elephants, sea turtles, orangutans, snakes, bats, creepy-looking proboscis monkeys, and tree frogs.  He then moves on to India for episode 2, where he finds cobras and all kinds of other exotic wildlife.  The animals are cool, the locations are cool, and the episodes feature as many animals as possible.  As Season One continues through Arizona, Alaska, Indonesia, Thailand, Madagascar and the Galapagos, we get to meet many animals we would ordinarily not get to see.

But the show isn’t great.  And the problem is the host.  Jeff Corwin is a likeable guy.  He kind of looks (and acts) like Ryan Reynolds, only without the really funny stuff.  Just the kind-of funny stuff.  But he talks too much.  He does a few set-pieces that are meant to be funny, but really we just want to see more animals.  Enough about you, already!  Let’s get to the proboscis monkeys!  That being said, this show is certainly good for kids.  They will be entertained, and at the same time they will learn about the natural world and perhaps something about conservation as well.

Jennifer Love Hewitt is darn hot.  She has two great boobies, a beautiful face, a sensational bum and adequate acting skills.  After that, The Ghost Whisperer has very little going for it.  Jay Mohr is one of my favourite comedic actors in the world.  But on this series he isn’t funny.  Or interesting.  His character is badly written.  I like Camryn Manheim as well.  But again, on this series, her character is badly written and given very little to do.  I assume Jennifer Love Hewitt’s character is badly written as well.  But I can’t pay much attention to the words she’s saying because of her boobs.  But even if she were given some incredibly scintillating, brilliant and hilarious dialogue, this show would still be pretty weak.

You see, Jennifer Love Hewitt sees ghosts.  Like that kid in the Sixth Sense.  And these ghosts are trying to tell her something so she can fix whatever is bothering them.  In Season Three, out tomorrow from Paramount Home Entertainment, many of these ghosts are her own family.  You see, where this show used to be stand-alone episodes (cheesy, boring episodes, but at least they have a beginning and an end), it no longer follows that pattern.  Although most of Season Three is episodes that wrap up in a fairly satisfactory way, there is also a thread that runs through the series about her lost father and her mother and this big secret…

You remember when the X-Files started to suck?  When it got away from the mutant inbreds that lived out on farms and the creepy stretchy guys who live under escalators and started to do that Alien Conspiracy crap?  Where if you missed one episode you were lost?  Well, that is Season Three of The Ghost Whisperer.  Except more cheesy.  And more lame (they actually do an episode on that Bloody Mary game).  But at least it still has Jennifer Love Hewitt.

ESPN Inside Access DVDs are incredible.  ESPN takes absolutely every bit of footage they can find of a sports star and crams it all onto one DVD.  In this case, that star is Derek Jeter of the New York Yankees.  SportsCentury shows, interviews, highlight reels, Chris Meyers.  It’s all here on yet another amazingly complete package.  So complete that there are some obscure items that no one but the Derek Jeter rabid fanatics of the world would ever want to see.  Jeter cross-dressing on the set of Saturday Night Live.  Jeter being interviewed by Freddie Prinze Jr.  Highlights from the Triple A all-star game the year before he was called up to the major leagues.  And a feature on the “World’s Sexiest Athlete”.

All in all, this is as complete a collection as you will ever find on an athlete, and Derek Jeter is certainly deserving.  His best highlights are truly unbelievable, his best plays seem to be reserved for the biggest stages - Championship Series, World Series, this is where he shines brightest.  But in the end, it’s not as exciting as it should be.  And that’s because Derek Jeter, the athlete, is sensational.  Derek Jeter, the person, is boring.  He’s the stereotypical, “one game at a time”, “110 percent” quote machine.  His interviews are boring.  His quotes are boring.  The interviews with his teammates and coaches hint at the possibility that there is more to him.  He flips out on teammates when they need to be called out.  He is an aggressive team leader and a passionate personality.  Behind closed doors.  But we sure don’t get to see that.

A great DVD jammed with information, this is an exciting look at an amazing baseball player.  But that’s about it.  And after more than two hours of various features showing just how boring Derek Jeter really is in public, I was really hoping that ESPN comes out with something more interesting soon.  Like David Ortiz.  Or Barry Bonds.  Or - especially - Manny Ramirez.  THAT guy is entertaining!  Derek Jeter:  Inside Access comes out tomorrow, from Alliance Films.

First off, I want to say that Pineapple Express is the worst movie made by the combination of Judd Apatow and Seth Rogen.  That being said, it is still better than most other comedies in the world.  And just because it doesn’t live up to the promise of Superbad and 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up, that doesn’t mean it isn’t worthwhile.  Because it is.  It is funny.  And it is good. 

Normally, I don’t much like stoner movies.  With the possible exception of Half Baked.  The problem I have with these movies is that they assume the people watching are in on the joke.  Like there’s some kind of giant stoner culture in the world where everyone listens to the same music, watches the same movies and TV shows, and knows all the same jokes.  They have the same vocabulary - reefer, bong, hydro, roach, so on and so forth.  And because I’m watching the movie, they assume I too am a part of this club.  And I’m not.  I don’t want to be a part of this club.  I don’t like this vocabulary.  I don’t like the word “Bogart” being thrown at me by some pothead as though it’s a secret word only him, me, and nine hundred thousand other useless potheads know.

Pineapple Express is different.  Seth Rogen stars as a weed-smoking process server.  His job is to dress up in different disguises in order to get close to people and serve them with legal papers.  James Franco stars as his weed dealer, a total burnout desperate for a friend.  After Rogen witnesses a murder, he and Franco are sent on a crazy flight all over the city, looking for some people and hiding from others.  Originally, the two characters were the opposite.  Franco was cast as the uptight process server and Rogen was to be the laid-back burnout dealer.  Which would have been ideal casting, one would think.  But somehow, along the way, the roles got switched.  And they decided to have Rogen play the guy with the job and the suit and the tie and the girlfriend, and pretty-boy James Franco became the dope smoking burnout.  And it works.  I can only assume it works even better than it would have the other way around.

Franco plays a character as far removed from Harry Osbourne in Spiderman as is possible.  And Rogen is fantastic, as usual.  The chemistry between the two is incredible, and the dialogue is great.  It appears to be dialogue that Rogen and Apatow can write in their sleep, but that is still better than anything this side of Kevin Smith.  The scene at the end, where Rogen, Franco and their dealer buddy Danny McBride are sitting around in a restaurant rehashing the events of the movie is absolutely hilarious.  And the opening scene, where Bill Hader is a test subject in a military experiment with marijuana is priceless. 

After that, the movie is haphazard, and there are moments that are hit-and-miss.  But the spirit of the film is endearing and fun.  The scenes where the two main characters try to do things they’ve seen in action movies, with real life results, are terrific.  Franco tries to kick the window out of a police car, but succeeds only in putting his foot through the windshield, where it gets stuck.  And the car chase ensues, with his foot hanging out of the window in front of him, and we all laugh.  Because it’s real and it’s funny.  And so is the rest of this movie.  Check out Pineapple Express.  You don’t have to be a stoner to like it.  Which is why it’s a good stoner movie.

The original Mummy movie was kind of neat.  Not fantastic, not a brilliant achievement by any means, but fun and action-packed and charming in a certain way.  The second Mummy was much worse.  But at the very least it was exactly what kids have come to expect from Brendan Fraser.  He will draw laughs by falling down and hurting himself, and he will throw cheesy lines at the screen with all the charisma of a bag of trail mix.  All of this is cranked up for the third installment in the series, The Mummy:  Tomb of the Dragon Emperor.  And it is much, much worse.  This is one of the worst movies of the year.  Like many series that run on too long (think about that original run of Batman movies) there are more and more characters thrown at the screen.

The original players are back - Brendan Fraser as the wisecracking spy-archaeologist-mummyfighter.  John Hannah as Fraser’s long-suffering, greedy but good at heart brother-in law.  Maria Bello stands in for Rachel Weisz, and that’s a decent switch.  Rachel Weisz does absolutely nothing for me, whereas I do like Maria Bello.  But, like the other characters, she is given just about nothing to do.  Thrown into the mix this time are Luke Ford as Fraser and Bello’s son, a…dashing archaeologist.  Almost the exact same story as Indiana Jones 4.  Then there is Isabella Leong, who is thousands of years old and guards the emperor’s tomb.  Her mother (Michelle Yeoh) also guards the tomb.  And then there’s an ancient Chinese general, a double-crossing museum curator, and the emperor himself.  Jet Li.

Everything about this movie is dreadful.  Great actors like Michelle Yeoh, Maria Bello and Jet Li are given, basically, nothing to do.  Every other actor is a cartoon.  Especially Luke Ford, who exudes the personality of a wet towel as the most boring “dashing archaeologist” of all time.  Somehow, this two-thousand-year-old woman falls in love with this tofu-stir-fry of a man.  How does this happen?  I think it all took place when he said “golly, I think you’re neat”.  And BAM!  Love.  The set-up involves Fraser and Bello being recruited to transport some kind of artifact to China.  Why them?  Well, the bad guy made sure it would be them.  Why did he do that?  Well, so they could be in the movie, of course.  And that’s about the extent of the logic that goes on here.  Until the Abominable Snowmen show up to put the narrative back on the straight and narrow.  No, really.  The Yeti come.

So we get some kind of ancient mystical cryptic secret.  Luke Ford, the linoleum floor of dashing archaeologists, has uncovered the Tomb of the Dragon Emperor.  Who is Jet Li.  The woman who defends the tomb attacks him.  But then they fall in love when the bad guys show up and have this crystal thing, and it opens the emperor’s sarcophagus and removes the curse that was placed on him thousands of years ago.  Why do they do this?  Because the crazy army guy thinks that the world needs a crazy emperor.  Which is fine.  We DO need a crazy emperor who can somehow shoot fire from his eyes and create icicles with his mind.  So far so good.  Well, so bad.  But it gets worse.

It turns out that the emperor (who is still a computer-generated Jet Li) needs to get to some kind of gateway in the mountains (the YETI mountains) with his crystal.  And if he arrives there, and puts the crystal in the hole, ALL will be LOST!  So he gets there and puts the crystal in the hole, and…oh.  It just shows him where he needs to go now.  But if he gets THERE, and drinks from the water, he will become immortal and be able to turn into a dragon, and ALL will be LOST!  So he gets to the cave, drinks the water, and…oh.  It turns out that NOW, all he needs to do is raise his army and cross the Great Wall of China, and then ALL will be LOST!

It really seems like they are making this movie up as they go along.  The emperor gets to a certain place, and they realize that the movie has only been going for half an hour, and they need to make it longer.  So they create another crisis and another trek and add more and more characters.  At the end of the film, they have the same problem - it isn’t yet long enough - so they pad it with a really cheesy, lame computer-generated battle between armies of the undead.  And then - the one moment that could have saved this movie!  Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh, two of the greatest actors in the history of kung-fu movies, are going to have a sword fight!  And…ugh.  The sword fight is six thrusts, six parries, and forty-eight jump cuts.  We have NO idea what’s going on! 

And that’s the problem with most of this movie.  This is a non-stop, beginning to end action movie.  So at the very least, it should involve compelling action.  But this movie is directed by Rob Cohen.  The guy behind The Fast And The Furious.  And it looks like a crappy music video.  So many jump cuts, so much frenetic editing, that we never, ever know what’s actually going on.  When you have Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh who are going to fight with swords, you know what you could do?  Nothing.  Just get out of the way, point one camera at them, and let them go.  They know what they’re doing.  But Cohen obviously couldn’t leave well enough alone, and the charm and excitement are completely sucked out of this film.

Uwe Boll does have a sense of humour.  It may not be a very good one, but it exists.  After all, he can laugh at himself to the point where he inserts himself into his movie Postal in a scene where he says his movies are funded with Nazi gold.  He then makes what he must think of as a joke about being aroused by children, and pays Verne Troyer his salary in Nazi gold teeth.  If the idea of any of this makes you laugh, then Postal is the movie for you.  Actually, no.  Postal is still not the movie for you, because I have just described the funniest scene in the film.  Postal is a movie for nobody.  No one should ever see this movie.  But I do have a few extra copies lying around.  The first four people to send me an email, at eric.bollman@ottawaradio.rogers.com will get a copy of this DVD.  But you would have to be a masochist to do so, and I will make fun of you if and when I receive that email.

The rest of the “humour” in this “comedy” comes from an effort to be as offensive as possible.  Nazi jokes, holocaust jokes, dead children jokes, Uwe-Boll-gets-shot-in-the-balls jokes.  At the very least Boll acknowledges that he is reviled in the critical community and attempts to make light of it, but his sense of humour really sucks.  It’s like he received and Offensive Joke Book from 1989 and threw it all up on screen.  “After I’m done with her, she’ll look like she’s been hit in the face with a mayonnaise truck”.  “I had to roll her in flour and look for the wet spot”.  Then there’s Dave Foley doing a very creepy full-frontal scene. 

The basic premise is that some kind of weird cult gets mixed up with a terrorist cell led by Osama Bin Laden, and a bunch of hot babes, Dave Foley, and Zack Ward pull out a bunch of guns and massacre men, women, children and terrorists.  The gun battle scenes really do look like they are straight out of the video game, which I guess is supposed to be the point.  But this video game must have been a really bad, really stupid, lowest common denominator type of game, if this is the movie that it spawned.  There is a scene where Uwe Boll fights the creator of the video game Postal, a man who is furious at what Boll has done to his game.  You kind of wish they had killed each other off and the movie had stopped at the 20-minute mark.

There is a special feature on the disc where we get to see Uwe Boll in the famous publicity stunt where he boxed his critics.  It’s virtually identical to the Raging Boll featurette on the “director’s cut” of Alone In The Dark.  And it’s still the most original thing on this DVD.  Postal came out August 26th from Peace Arch Entertainment.

Final Destination (4/10):  The first Final Destination movie was two things.  Terrible and great.  In a movie that follows the conventions of the teen-horror genre, it manages to be kind of original.  Sure, there are hot young actors getting into scary situations and so forth.  But Final Destination manages to inject some life into this.  You see, a kid (Devon Sawa) has a premonition about a plane crash.  When he freaks out and demands to be let off the plane, along with several others, the plane does indeed crash.  Then Death has to even the score, and each of those who escaped death on the plane get picked off one by one.  Which means there is no real villain, it’s just Death coming out of nowhere.  Which leads to some crazy, out-of-nowhere, all-of-a-sudden death sings which are genuinely jolting.  The special effects are cheesy and bad, the dialogue is inane, and Devon Sawa is simply dreadful as the lead.  But at least people get killed in really interesting ways.  Final Destination was directed by James Wong.

Final Destination 2 (5/10):  An even more ludicrous plot than the first one, with Ali Larter, the lone survivor from the first movie, locked up in a padded cell, terrified that Death is still coming for her.  When a girl (A.J. Cook) has a premonition about a car accident, she manages to save several people.  Again, Death comes for them, and they enlist Larter’s help to defeat Death.  Then there is some nonsense about a pregnant lady and a birth interrupting the chain of death.  It is an even-more ludicrous premise and idiotic denoument than the first movie.  But what makes this movie better is simply that Cook and Larter are much better actors than Sawa, the dialogue isn’t quite as stupid, and the special effects are better.  Which means those amazing death scenes are that much more jolting.  James Wong is out for this one, and David R. Ellis replaces him as director.  He is slightly less ham-handed, but this movie is still really stupid.  It’s just stupid AND fun.

Final Destination 3 (2/10):  The worst in the series.  At this point, we’re used to the crazy, out-of-nowhere deaths.  We know what to expect.  And of course, they’re still shocking.  But this plot, (now revolving around a roller coaster accident) is amazingly preposterous, even for this series.  After a pretty decent second installment in this series, they have gone back to the people who created the first one.  James Wong is back as director, and brings all of his ineptitude to the table.  Mary Elizabeth Winstead plays the girl with the premonition this time, and she is average at best.  There is a pretty good death scene involving a tanning bed.  But what makes this movie dreadful is…well many things.  Here are a few of them.  The special effects are, once again, dreadful.  The opening scene with the roller coaster is full of shaky cameras, bizarre camera tricks, and nothing cool.  The movie makes references to Abraham Lincoln and 9/11 when the kids start to investigate what’s going on.  A staggering series of leaps in logic that leaves us really angry.  We get even more angry as the death scenes, which are no longer a surprise, drag on.  And on.  And on.  Just kill them already!  We know what’s coming!  In fact, just kill this movie already.

The three movies came out in a package yesterday, courtesy of Alliance Films.  They are available in a bargain trilogy, all on just one disc.  Final Destination and Final Destination 2 are on one side of the DVD, Final Destination 3 is on the other.  There are no special features worth mentioning.  When it hit stores, there was a 2-disc edition of Final Destination 3 that allowed you to change the movie - choose how the characters die, whether they die at all - that was kind of neat.  But the movie was so bad to begin with that there was no possible way I could care about these special features.  Therefore, the best way to get this series IS on a single disc.  If you want to get it at all.

 Oh, and the FOURTH installment in this series is scheduled to be released in 2009.  Which might well make this “trilogy” incomplete.  Perhaps you’re better off waiting for Alliance to release a thirty-one disc box set of all thirty-one installments once this series has finally bled itself dry.  On the plus side - David R. Ellis will be directing the fourth movie, which means it might be pretty good, like Final Destination 2.

Pick of the week:  Son of Rambow (9/10):  The most charming movie in years.  Two young boys become friends while bonding over Rambo movies and filming one of their own.

What Happens in Vegas:  Ashton Kutcher?  Cameron Diaz?  Sounds a lot like Matthew McConnaughey and Kate Hudson to me.  Which sounds like garbage.

Where In The World is Osama Bin Laden? (4/10):  A sub-par second effort from the director of Super Size Me.  Lots of set-up, no payoff.

The Future of Food (8/10):  A fascinating look at the food we eat, the methods by which it is grown, produced and delivered, and what it means for the world in the future.

Confessions of a Superhero (7/10):  Interesting documentary about the people who dress up as superheroes and walk along Hollywood Boulevard taking pictures with tourists for money.

Redbelt:  A movie about underground prize-fighting, MMA and so forth, where a guy gets sucked into the world against his will…stars Time Allen.  Seriously.  Tim Allen.

The Little Mermaid:  Ariel’s Beginning:  Well, the title about says it all.  More Disney for the Little Mermaid crowd.

Woody Allen:  The Collection (9/10):  Six of Woody Allen’s second-tier movies are packaged together in a terrific collection that features one obscure disc - Wild Man Blues, a great documentary about Allen and his jazz ensemble.

Virgin Territory:  Stars Mischa Barton and Hayden Christensen, and is all about seduction in 14th century Florence.  Sounds dreadful.

Chicago 10 (8/10):  A strange but compelling documentary about the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968, the anti-war protests that came with it, the riots that followed the protests, and the arrests and trial that followed the protests.

Postal (1/10):  A religious charlatan, his mild mannered nephew and a gang of bosomy commandos face off against Osama bin Laden and the Taliban in an epic battle that will determine the fate of the world.  Whee!!!

Scream Trilogy (9/10):  Alliance Films has a new set of the Scream trilogy coming out tomorrow.  There’s nothing new here, no special features, but the series is still absolutely amazing.

PBS The Presidents Box Set (10/10):  A staggeringly large volume of documentaries about the major American Presidents of the 20th century.  35 hours of information, interviews and in-depth studies of politics.  Incredible.

The Last Winter:  Unseen evil stalks a crew in the tundra of Alaska.  Unseen evil?  Sounds…ugh.

Lucky Luke Go West:  The Movie (7/10):  A French movie based on the old comic books starring Lucky Luke, the Western hero who is the fastest draw in the West.  Bonkers, ridiculous action and incredibly silly humour, but still worthwhile.

Everybody Hates Chris, Season Three (8/10):  Still one of the funniest shows on television.

Best of Comedy Central Presents, Volume Two (7/10):  A definite step up from Volume One.  Few weak moments.

NCIS Season Five (5/10):  This is a show that is exactly like every other similar show.  Cops and crime scenes and forensic investigation.  I just happen to kinda like those shows.

The Untouchables Season Two, Volume Two (8/10):  Still one of the best classic TV shows available on DVD.  Robert Stack, Elliott Ness, Al Capone, guns and babes and booze and gangsters.  Good times.

Also Out:

Heroes:  Season Two
Entourage:  Complete Fourth Season
Prison Break Season Three
Restraint
Artifacts
Bakugan
Care Bears:  Care-A-Lot Collection
Fishtales
Go Diego Go:  Diego’s Hallowe’en
Puzzle
Toxic
When Evil Calls
Boxboarders
Chamber of Death
Final Approach
Gypsy Caravan
Steel Trap
Wasted

Next week:

Married Life
Life Before Her Eyes
The Office:  Season Four
My Sassy Girl
August
Next Avengers:  Heroes of Tomorrow
Desperate Housewives:  Complete Fourth Season
AKA Tommy Chong
Bait Shop
The Forgotten Woman
Life:  Season One
The Morgue
Supernatural:  The Complete Third Season
Ballet Shoes
Genghis Khan:  To the Ends of the Earth and Sea
Lords of the Street
Outlaw

I have watched a lot of movies in my time. 400 or so of those movies are reviewed here on this website. But prior to starting this website, I would venture a guess and say I have seen about five thousand movies, maybe more. Because I am really lame and have no life. And of all those movies, I can honestly say that I have rarely been as charmed with a movie as I am with Son of Rambow. Paramount Home Entertainment releases this gem on Tuesday, August 26th, and I highly recommend picking it up right away. There is no word I can use to describe this movie other than “charming”. A word that could be considered one that indicates faint praise. Like, “oh, that movie was so cute and charming, too bad it involved Meg Ryan and sucked”. But I mean it in a way that conveys the highest praise.

Son Of Rambow is not a great movie. It is not a perfect movie or even an extraordinarily well-crafted movie. But those are merely benchmarks that many movie critics use to give a final rating. Like a judge in Olympic gymnastics. Oh, there’s an awkward cut at the end of the scene. Minus one star. There’s a slight hop at the end of the dismount. Minus one point. What movies aim to do is create a certain emotion, and the technical aspects of a movie can sometimes be totally irrelevant. And Son Of Rambow is one of those movies. Not that it’s ham-handed or poorly directed or anything. But it’s charm comes from elsewhere. What makes the film so wonderful is that the charm is, or at least seems to be, completely effortless. It’s that effortlessness that makes great movies. E.T., The Goonies, and a very few others have managed to do the same.

Imagine, for a moment, that you are a young boy, about nine or ten years old, being raised by a single mother in some kind of religious cult. When you go to school, you have to wait outside the classroom whenever the class is watching a movie or something on TV, because your religion forbids it. You have no friends, because making friends with anyone the cult does not approve is forbidden. You have a vivid imagination, and you express this incredible imagination through drawing - on your schoolbooks, your locker, the bathroom stalls at school, anything you can get your hands on. And then, through a series of bizarre circumstances, you end up seeing the only thing you have ever seen, on television or in movies. And it’s First Blood. Seriously, stop and think about that for a moment. When I was very young, about five years old, I saw television for the first time ever. I watched a Raggedy Ann cartoon at, I believe, Megan McLeod’s birthday party. And it affected me. In point of fact, it scared the living hell out of me. I had nightmares for weeks. About Raggedy Ann. Imagine seeing Rambo in that situation.

Now, the only window you have into the world beyond your own is RAMBO. And the only boy willing to talk to you at school is making a movie. You know this boy because every time you’re out in the hall when the class is watching TV, he’s out in the hall because he’s been kicked out of his own class. And now, you are obsessed with Rambo, and you get to play the Son Of Rambo in his movie. The world is opening up to you! In fact, this other boy is so impressed with your drawings that he’s making YOUR movie. When young Will turns to young Lee Carter and says “this is the happiest day of my entire life”, you can’t question the statement for even a second. It’s stating the obvious. Of COURSE this is the happiest day of his life. And we, the audience, are absolutely thrilled for him.

The best thing about this movie are the two young leads. Will Poulter plays Lee Carter, the bad kid in school, a kid who lives alone with his abusive jerk of an older brother because his mom is gallivanting around Europe with some guy. He steals, he wrecks stuff, he tells teachers off, simply because there is no one at home to actually discipline him. So why wouldn’t he? Poulter is fantastic in the role, but it is Bill Milner who turns this film into something great. As Will Proudfoot, the young man under the thumb of this bizarre religious cult, he is pure innocence personified, completely guileless, and so powerfully enthusiastic about this project and his new friend that we are totally sucked in.

The two young men, initially brought together in a sort of friendship-of-convenience, soon become really good friends. As the only two who know about their film project, they become extremely close. Will is sneaking out of his house and plotting convoluted ways to spend time with Lee Carter to make the movie. Lee Carter is sneaking the video camera away from his brother and trying to make him happy while running around with Will. But of course, something has to go wrong in the film, as with any film. And a new kid at school (the Coolest Kid In School) changes the dynamic of their friendship. Lee Carter, more world-wise than Will, sees the new kid for what he is - an irritating poser. But Will, still so amazed by everything in the world around him, can’t understand Lee Carter’s reluctance to involve the new kid, Didier, in the movie.

Of course, their friendship suffers a major setback, and I don’t think it’s giving too much away to tell you that they end up reconciling. But it’s not the end of the movie that matters. It’s the journey that’s amazing. Watching these two kids together is magical. Watching Will perform the stunts that will make up the bulk of their movie is absolutely hilarious. (Especially the one where he jumps out of the tree with the umbrella.) And seeing these kids come of age together merits just one description. Absolutely charming. This is one of the most feel-good movies in years.