A few weeks ago, Screengrab's own Phil Nugent wrote a column on the phenomenon of "fan remakes." But the truth is that fan remakes have been around for years. The most famous example of the genre, Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation, dates to the late 1980s, and indeed my friends and I got into the act with a short remake of Pulp Fiction, with the twist of turning all the characters into morons. But with such high-profile films as Be Kind Rewind and this film, fan remakes — or, as Gondry calls it, "Sweding" — are more ubiquitous than ever. While Gondry's film appears to be one of his trademark lo-fi flights of fancy, Son of Rambow looks to be taking another path, that of the twee Brit-com. Personally, my patience for films like this ran out in roughly 1999, but it should at least be interesting to see how a cute film in which children mount a remake of First Blood plays in the wake of Stallone's latest ultra-violent installment in his other signature series.
In addition, here's a link to Mike D'Angelo's review of the film from last year's Sundance.