Boyz in the Wood – first look review

Scot­tish youth in revolt is the sub­ject of music video direc­tor Nin­ian Doff’s first nar­ra­tive fea­ture. Set pre­dom­i­nate­ly in the Scot­tish High­lands, Boyz in the Wood blends var­i­ous gen­res, cre­at­ing an action-adven­ture-com­e­dy-hor­ror Frankenstein’s mon­ster which, for the most part, moves sur­pris­ing­ly smoothly.

After set­ting a school toi­let on fire, three city teens are sent on a Duke of Edin­burgh expe­di­tion in an attempt by their teacher (Jonathan Aris) to straight­en them out. The three com­padres – weed enthu­si­ast Dean (Rian Gor­don), Cup-a-soup enthu­si­ast Dun­can (Lewis Gribben) and hip-hop enthu­si­ast DJ Beet­root (Viraj June­ja) – are joined by the whole­some, home­schooled Ian (Samuel Bot­tom­ley), who thinks a lam­i­nat­ed DoE cer­tifi­cate will make a nice addi­tion to his uni­ver­si­ty application.

As the odd­ball group head off into the wilder­ness with no phone sig­nal, they face their own inter­nal prob­lems: DJ Beet­root attempts to hide his mid­dle-class back­ground behind a shaky rap­per façade, while Dean feels the reper­cus­sions of dodgy drugs and Ian just wants to keep every­one fac­ing the right direc­tion. Soon, big­ger trou­ble arrives on the hori­zon in the form of the omi­nous, masked ​“Duke” (Eddie Izzard) who, armed with a hunt­ing rifle, is patrolling the coun­try culling vermin…

The film’s com­e­dy comes from visu­al gags and sharp edit­ing, rem­i­nis­cent of Edgar Wright’s Hot Fuzz and Tai­ka Waititi’s Hunt for the Wilder­peo­ple. Like its inspi­ra­tions, Boyz in the Wood excels in its phys­i­cal com­e­dy per­for­mances, par­tic­u­lar­ly from the young actors. While a failed attempt by Ian to escape through a trap­door and a van revers­ing down a hill are hard­ly push­ing the bound­aries of com­e­dy, they are gen­uine laugh-out-loud moments. A sub­plot involv­ing Kate Dick­ie and Kevin Guthrie, play­ing coun­try police offi­cers excit­ed by the prospect of a case big­ger than catch­ing the local bread thief, is fun if a lit­tle hackneyed.

While the film begins in rol­lick­ing fash­ion, how­ev­er, it strug­gles to keep all its plates spin­ning as char­ac­ters split off and dif­fer­ent plot threads threat­en to over­whelm the cen­tral adven­ture nar­ra­tive. Dur­ing sev­er­al hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry scenes the wacky edit­ing style resem­bles a Snapchat fil­ter and, not unlike the app, becomes a lit­tle tedious the more it’s used.

It’s great to see a film set in the High­lands con­scious­ly sub­vert­ing the trope of out­siders attacked by angry local hill­bil­lies – in this case it’s posh, rich peo­ple who come for our heroes – yet Doff makes no real attempt at social com­men­tary. Yet despite burn­ing itself out too ear­ly, Boyz in the Wood nev­er los­es its sense of boy­ish, big-heart­ed adventure.