(12A)
Too many recent period movies — The Other Boleyn Girl is a notable example — have excessive period detail dumped on them. But writer-director Garth Jennings’s perceptive coming-of-age comedy subtly establishes its 1982 suburban England setting without over-dressing.
In particular, the long tracking that follows Bill Milner’s 10-year-old Will Proudfoot bicycle ride past a street of neat suburban houses and their neat owners, and a cinema auditorium wreathed in smoke, with young Artful Dodger-style reprobate Lee Carter (Will Poulter) happily puffing away, vividly celebrate time and milieu.
Will, coming from a strict religious community, is forbidden television or films, while fellow schoolboy Lee ducks and dives with the best of them.
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