Scrapper

"Georgie" (Lola Campbell) ingeniously manages to hoodwink social services following the death of her mother, and so lives on her own and makes a living running an unique cycle recycling programme with her friend "Ali" (Ali Uzun) that keeps them in ready cash. One afternoon, a guy leaps the back fence and introduces himself as her absentee father "Jason" (Harris Dickinson). She wants nothing to do with him, but he's no quitter and over the next hour or so we see the pair gradually realise what they have been missing in the years they spent apart. There isn't really much jeopardy here but what there is, is chemistry, The young Campbell is hugely charismatic and her mischievous but decent characterisation of a latter day urchin is really quite engaging. It's also one of Dickinson's more characterful efforts too. He doesn't rely on his looks and his musculature - he is also delivering us an enjoyable performance to watch as their relationship evolves - and not always smoothly. The writing offers us a dialogue that comes across as genuine, funny and for a low-ish budget effort this really is well worth a watch. I saw it at the cinema, but I'm not sure you need that - television will do fine.

One of those low budget, British films that I like to catch has all the ingredients of the genre as we watch an independent 12 year old called Georgie reconnect with her estranged father. Jason who left for a new life in Ibiza.

The film has a little comedy element at times which breaks the mood of the film which can otherwise have become depressing and kitchen sink. However the performance of young actress Lola Campbell as Georgie is a delight.

Despite seemingly wearing the same football shirt throughout the film (joked upon in one scene) she brings this film to life as a 12 year old fighting the demons of her mother's passing and living (somehow) alone surviving by stealing cycles and cycle parts and selling them for whatever money she can earn.

The premise of the film has often been repeated but not in the way this film is handled. Be it the location, the characters and their actions or casting a streetwise kid of the street as Georgie. The screenplay does tug at the heart strings as you would expect as the film goes on. It has a pretty short running-time of only 84 minutes but it is a film I would make the effort to watch.

The director, Charlotte Regan makes her feature debut with this film. I will be looking out for future Regan work for sure.

Set and filmed in the greater London area, Lola Campbell is really good as Georgie. She was an accidental product of teenagers and her dad skipped out pretty quickly. Now that she is 12 her mother developed an illness and died. Somehow Georgie managed to stay in their flat, avoiding Social Services by claiming an uncle lived there. An ingenious girl, she would have the guy at the story recite certain phrases that she could play back during phone calls.

She has to really scrap to stay alive, like nicking things to fence so that she could get some money. Mostly living the life of a feral child, with only one friend, a boy named Ali. Then, out of the blue, this 30-yr-old guy with partially bleached hair shows up, jumping over the back wooden fence. He is her dad, coming back from overseas to see what he might be able to do.

The way the movie starts, with unusual scenes and a very shaky camera, we considered abandoning it. But we didn't and the patience paid off. This is a really nice, heartwarming story about two strangers, daughter and dad, learning about each other and finding how each can enrich the others' life. The last 20 or so minutes is definitely worth the patience.

At home, on DVD, from our public library.

SCRAPPER has so much potential but unfortunately quickly falls apart.

What Worked: The characters were authentic and grounded and the acting was strong. Some of the magical realism was done well. There was heart. The way the characters in Georgie's neighborhood and life are explored is creative, as is the use of color. I also appreciated that even though Georgie had a hearing aid, it was just part of her world and never really spoken about. It just was normalised.

What didn't work: The story was trying too hard to pull at your heartstrings and often took itself too seriously. Not much happens, it's slow and repetitive and the whole story could have been told in a 25 minute short film with the same emotional arc. The emotional investment that is established in the prologue is promising but it then you're living in that same space for what feels like a 2hr film (even though it was 84 minutes it felt like it never ended). The script wasn't tight and some plot points were left unanswered.

Overall it's definitely what you would expect a Sundance film to look and feel like (hence why Sundance is becoming more and more irrelevant and tone deaf).

If you wanna watch a great movie about poor white single-parent family, I much prefer THE FLORIDA PROJECT as it was more restrained in its request for your heartstrings and yet manages to tug at them harder. Watching THE FLORIDA PROJECT I was moved to cry, watching SCRAPPER I kept think wow, they're really wanting me to feel this certain way at this moment in the story, when will this be over?

You can tell "Scrapper" is heartfelt, and it has what could have been a heart tugging premise if it had been better made. But the movie is anemic and undercooked. It doesn't build out characters enough for you to feel any of the things the movie clearly wants you to be feeling about them.

It also doesn't help that there's not a lot of rooting interest in these people. The dad played by Harrison Dickinson is kind of a jerk, and I think we're supposed to see that he's grown by the time the movie's over and see is reentry into his daughter's life as a good thing. But he remains a jerk, and doesn't grow, and encourages his daughter to steal bikes and get away with assaulting other kids. The happy ending this movie forces on us didn't feel all that happy to me. I've known dead beat dads in real life, and the movie was more convinced than I was that this guy was going to stop being a dead beat.

Grade: C.