Worth: $18.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Lola Campbell, Alin Uzun, Harris Dickinson
Intro:
… laced with humour and never forced or overly sentimental.
When we first clapped eyes on a young teenage Keira Knightley in Bend it Like Beckham, we got the sense of seeing someone who is a highly-watchable natural. The same could be said of Lola Campbell who plays the lead in this charming drama from the UK. It is not really a comedy but the off-the-cuff humour (a lot of which sems as if it could be improvised) arises organically in the banter. The director Charlotte Regan, who has had shorts placed in major festivals, was keen to keep her film fresh and believably grounded in a real area and culture. This is not a tricked up ‘mockney’ version of the British working class. In a way, it is closer to Ken Loach than Guy Ritchie. Regan also insisted on sourcing her main cast from locals. She likes the atmosphere that such young actors bring to a production. As she puts it, “They find everything magic and that rubs off on everyone else.”
The actual story of Scrapper couldn’t be simpler. The film is only 80-odd minutes long, but its appeal far exceeds its scale. Our focus is squarely on the world of twelve-year-old Georgie (Campbell). Her mum has died recently, and her dad mooched off when she was only a toddler. Georgie is not mean or screwed up, but she is understandably wary, and she doesn’t trust adults. She manages to play the system by bluffing the school and her social workers that she is being cared for, whereas in fact, she is living alone. There is obviously a deep vulnerability underneath her cheeky attitude. She is coping in her own way though. For example, she keeps her little house clean just like her mum did. She has one friend called Ali (Alin Uzun) and he has a nice mum so there are at least some adults who are steady and strong. Ali and Georgie make a bit on the side by nicking push bikes and flogging them. They are pretty inept grifters though, and there is gentle humour around their rubbish attempts to drive a hard bargain with the woman they are fencing them to.
The big change comes for Georgie when Jason (Harris Dickinson, Triangle of Sadness, Where the Crawdads Sing) turns up claiming to be the famous long-absent dad. He sports a sort of sub-Eminem haircut, which might possibly have been fashionable once in the party town of Ibiza where he has been DJing. Jason too is a bit if a bluffer, but he is self-aware and sensitive too, like Georgie. The working out of the relationship between Georgie and Jason is the main thread of the film. It is not a particularly surprising arc but that doesn’t matter here. It is the way it is done that matters. Like the film itself, the relationship is laced with humour and never forced or overly sentimental. The film also tries to leaven the social realism with touches of fantasy and to-camera asides in a mockumentary riff. This isn’t always smoothly integrated but, as suggested above, it has already gained our good will from its performances and lively script.
This will be one of those heartwarming British dramas that we will remember fondly for a long time.
