Review in a Hurry:  Two kids bond over a touching, heartfelt celebration of masculinity: Rambo: First Blood Part II. Full of quirk, slapstick and dry British humor, Son of Rambow is a delight, but too often forgets to stay true to its heart.

The Bigger Picture:  Will Proudfoot (Bill Milner) is a little wisp of a kid with his head in the clouds, the kind who doodles outlandish fantasies in the pages of his Bible. His family is in the Brethren, a religious sect that disallows anything remotely to do with having fun, and he's starving for a good time.

Class bully and latchkey kid Lee Carter (Will Poulter), on the other hand, specializes in fun—the kind that usually involves petty crime. It's hanging out with Lee where Will sees his first film, bootlegged off the movie screen by Lee's camcorder: Rambo.

Mystified and delighted by Rambo's heroics, Will convinces Lee to make a sequel of sorts, "Son of Rambow," for a local film competition. The stunts that ensue are as crisp as Jerry Lewis' pratfalls, and the classmates' chemistry is sweet and genuine. The blood-brother moments between the two are when the movie nails it, when it reminds us of our childhood best friend, that special, intense relationship that can influence the rest of your life.

The movie falters when Eurotrash French foreign exchange student Didier (Jules Sitruk) and the rest of the student body get in on the act. The mass involvement dilutes the pair's artistic intentions and threatens to pull the boys apart—a great plot wrinkle, but at the cost of introducing characters, like Didier, who come off as superficially idiosyncratic instead of all-too-human.

The forced quirkiness wrecks the sweet ambiance of the movie, forcing it to take the long way to a fulfilling and touching ending.

The 180—a Second Opinion:  This is a testament to casting unknowns, and in this case, kids. The two leads, Poulter and Milner, have no prior experience and are fantastic. It's particularly hard to believe that Poulter, as the cigarette-smoking (!) bully Lee Carter, is a newcomer to acting. He impressively owns a complicated role with gruff finesse.