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SON OF RAMBOW With all four Rambo flicks recently hitting DVD in a lavish new box set, now's as good a time as any to check out this British coming-of-age yarn whose central premise is that a Sylvester Stallone actioner can influence budding filmmakers as much as any classic ever produced by Welles, Hitchcock or Lean. Set in a small English community in the 1980s, this sweet fable focuses on Lee Carter (Will Poulter), a mischievous lad who's always getting into trouble, and Will Proudfoot (Bill Milner), a quiet boy who belongs to a strict religious sect that forbids most contact with the outside world and its trappings (such as film and television). Lee bullies the naive Will into serving as the stuntman on the action film he's creating for the sake of a TV competition (Screen Test, an actual U.K. series back in the '70s and '80s); once Will watches First Blood, Lee's inspiration for his own film, his imagination is fired by this taboo medium and he throws himself wholeheartedly into the project. It all sounds a bit precious, but Poulter and especially Milner are such charismatic young performers that they inject Son of Rambow with some genuine poignancy (both boys lack father figures, to say nothing of friends) to go along with the expected comic shenanigans. And the word is that even Sly Stallone gave this film a blessing, marking one of the few times that the person involved with the likes of Judge Dredd and Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot has displayed a modicum of good taste. ***
SPEED RACER To complain about the excesses of Speed Racer would be like bitching that there are too many rib eyes kept on ice at your local steakhouse or that there are too many references to God in the Holy Bible. Anyone who ever watched the 1960s cartoon series should recall the frenetic pace, often blurry visuals and gaudy color schemes. In fact, those were the reasons kids tuned into the series in the first place; certainly, it wasn't to marvel at the flat characterizations or infantile dialogue. Still, while there's no denying the visual wizardry behind Speed Racer, visual wizardry is about all that the movie has going for it, and it's hard to rally the troops behind so chilly a leader. The basic plotline deals with earnest Speed Racer (Into the Wild's Emile Hirsch) attempting to bring down the corrupt dynasty that controls the racing industry, but for the most part, the narrative form as we know it often doesn't seem to exist in this film: The Wachowski Brothers (The Matrix) employ impressive CGI mixed with old-school techniques to create something of a mind meld – Peter Max by way of Andy Warhol by way of Dr. Seuss. Yet splashy colors and kinetic energy both have the ability to wear viewers down, especially when bombarding them for 135 minutes. Little children are sure to get antsy during this PG-rated confection, while adults need more subtext than a broad condemnation of rampant capitalism (the primary villain is cut from the same soiled cloth as today's odious, profit-driven CEOs). Faring best amidst all the razzle-dazzle are John Goodman as Speed's doughy dad and a scene-stealing chimp who deserves his own three-picture deal. **1/2
THE STRANGERS One of my cinematic pet peeves (and they are legion) is when a fellow scribe describes a motion picture as pointless. Despite the scarcity of story, or lack of depth among the characters, or general ineptitude on every level, the filmmakers had some sort of vision – some raison d'etre – for making their movie, and that alone means it has some sort of point. Now here comes The Strangers to test out my long-standing theory and risk turning me into a hypocrite. Is there a point to this anemic thriller in which a young couple (Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman) are terrorized in a secluded vacation home by three masked invaders? Maybe the point is to show how none of us are really safe from the evils of the outside world, even when we're in our own homes. That's a moldy premise that barely needs repeating: For starters, just the past two months alone have seen the theatrical release of Funny Games and the DVD release of the French import Them, both wielding identical plotlines. Or perhaps writer-director Bryan Bertino's only purpose was to scare the living hell out of audience members, a noble pursuit in this age of fright-free terror tales. But The Strangers isn't scary, only boring, and the final image shows that Bertino didn't even have the guts to follow the story to its logical end. His cop-out may not make the movie even more pointless, but it certainly makes it more insulting. *
