BOYZ IN THE WOOD
★★★★ OUT 7 AUGUST / PRIME VIDEO CERT TBC / 87 MINS
DIRECTOR Ninian Doff CAST Rian Gordon, Lewis Gribben, Viraj Juneja, Samuel Bottomley
PLOT After blowing up a school toilet, Scottish pupils Dean (Gordon), Duncan (Gribben) and DJ Beatroot (Juneja) are forced to take part in the Duke Of Edinburgh scheme. Meeting up with nerd Ian (Bottomley), the quartet reluctantly make their way across the countryside, where they become the targets of a pair of gun-crazy poshos.
DESPITE PUNNING ON the title of a 29-yearold film, there is something fresh about Boyz In The Wood. Video director Ninian Doff (Kasabian, Miike Snow, Chemical Brothers) has taken an oft-told tale of survival in the wild and imbued it with nutty energy, laughs, invention and a surprisingly emotional undertow. It doesn’t all land, but it mixes comedy, horror and gentle social commentary into a homemade Molotov cocktail of mayhem and map-reading.
The set-up is simple and swiftly delivered. Having burnt down the school toilet by testing to see if they can set fire to a turd, nominal leader Dean (Rian Gordon), not-so-bright Duncan (Lewis Gribben) and wannabe hip-hop legend DJ Beatroot (Viraj Juneja) are sent on a Duke Of Edinburgh Award trek for, according to teacher Mr Carlyle (Jonathan Aris), “four days in the country, no phone, just your wits and nature”. They are joined by home-schooled Ian (Samuel Bottomley), a swot who sees the laminated Dofe certificate as a passport to the uni of his choice. So they head off into the wilderness — cutting a hole in the map to create a spliff, debating whether the word orienteering is racist — until they are stopped in their tracks by someone they believe to be the actual Duke Of Edinburgh taking potshots at them with a rifle.
At this point Boyz In The Wood enters a different zone of madness, as the unhappy campers confront class warfare and murder, discover the hallucinogenic qualities of rabbit poo, snort powdered soup and turn a farmers’ night into a rap battle. Amidst the carnage, a subplot involving the local police (Kate Dickie and Kevin Guthrie) mistaking the group for a cell of terrorist paedophile hoodies adds little threat, feeling like it’s from a different film. Also, some of the storytelling, especially the events that drive the film into its third act, doesn’t ring true. And let the record reflect, these boys are never once in a wood.
But the good far outstrips the missteps here. Doff brings a lively bag of tricks to enliven the straightforward narrative, from faux ’80s Duke Of Edinburgh promo videos to lightning-quick character profiles; from putting the characters inside an animated map to creating a full-on musical interlude — if you ever wanted to see Game Of Thrones’ Jeor Mormont (James Cosmo) dabbing, this is your chance. The gag-rate is high and the writing finds surprising ways to pay off jokes. It’s also likeably performed by the young leads — Juneja’s DJ Beatroot, inappropriately dressed all in white, worrying about his DJ name gets the biggest laughs— backed up by Eddie Izzard, Georgie Glen, and Alice Lowe as a bread-obsessed police superintendent. In its final moments the film finds genuine feelings in its unlikely friendships and the new-found sense that the characters’ lives are not limited to working in a fish factory. A surprisingly tender end to a fun, raucous 87-minute romp.