son of rambow

Hmm.

Unlike yesterday's Blood Diamond, where I went in expecting it to be poor and really liked it, Son of Rambow I'd heard a lot of good stuff about and, well, I was a little disappointed if I'm honest.

I dunno - it just never really seemed to get going for me.

One of the problems I had was that you'd get a scene that was very realistic - this is what school is really like, but then suddenly there'd be a moment in it that was totally unrealistic. Or the entire next scene would just be daft.

There were also quite a few jokes that seemed to fall a bit flat to me. It reminded me quite a lot of Napoleon Dynamite, in that it kept feeling like I'd not quite got the gag. I mean, it wasn't that bad - I did find plenty of it funny - but it was that sort of thing.

But the thing is there were some truly excellent moments in it.

One of the characters was an artist with a huge and vivid imagination and every so often it sort of slipped into showing his imagination. There was a particularly effective dream sequence, for example, and another where he was travelling along in a car and his drawing were animated onto the surrounding fields.

These moments I absolutely loved - it was imaginative and lovely and clever all at the same time.

But other bits just didn't work for me. The whole issue of the same character being brought up in a weird religious sect just didn't really work.

Another element that didn't' quite gel was some of the dialogue. The main characters were all kids and some of the dialogue was perfectly framed for their age, but other bits were too grown up.

Not so much in the sentiments and feeling, but in how eloquently they were expressed. This was especially true for the scruff-bag/ruffian character - I had no problem with him being smart, but they way he talked needed to be less well rounded and clever in order to suit his character.

The problem is that makes me feel like a cynical, miserable git. What I mean is I didn't quite enjoy the film as much as I thought I was going to, but I'm left with a nagging feeling that maybe I was just not in the right frame of mind to enjoy it, rather than is being actively bad.