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Faking it ‘til you make it is all well and good, but what happens when you actually make it? How do you keep the wolf from the door, the pretense alive, the lie a reality?
James McAvoy’s likeable directorial debut explores the dark side of that story, speeding off like a souped-up boy racer before wrapping around a lamp post in a moody final stretch that reveals the cost of it all.
As charted in 2013 documentary The Great Hip Hop Hoax and faithfully recorded in the former’s memoir, Gavin Bain (Seamus McLean Ross) and Billy Boyd (Samuel Bottomley) were a couple of Dundee wannabe B-boys and bedroom hip hop heads for whom rap music was both an inspiration and a way out. Bonding over skateboarding and a shared loved of Tupac, American street culture was an exit sign from their Scottish council estate. Problem? No one wanted a pair of Scottish rappers. Solution? Reinvent themselves as a Californian rap double act called Silibil N' Brains and hope no one asks too many questions.
And as recreated in this twisty rags-to-riches tale, no one did. Not their wolfish record label boss (McAvoy), who sees the dollar signs in a pair of rapping white guys in the era of Eminem and D12; not the UK media types who are take happy to take the pair’s vague Californian back story at face value – even if their professed home town, ‘San Diangeles’, sounds a bit suspicious. Only their mate Mary (The Testaments’ Lucy Halliday) is on hand to remind them that, actually, they’re full of shite.
There’s plenty of insurgent spirit as the two Celts go full Kneecap on the London music scene
Did we need another version of the story when Jeanie Finlay’s perceptive doc has Bain and Boyd reflecting first-hand on their mad experiences? There’s times when even McAvoy doesn’t seem entirely convinced, switching to home video footage to rigidly recreate a knockabout friendship that curdled under the bright lights rather than finding a fresh spin. It’s artifice built on artifice and becomes distancing rather than conspiratorial.
The two charismatic leads bring a nice mix of wide-eyed naivety and posturing charm, and there’s plenty of insurgent, up-yours Scottish spirit as the two Celts go full Kneecap on the London music scene. But when the focus switches to Bain, seduced by the trappings of the high life, California Schemin’ hairpins into addiction drama mode and with the bubbly Boyd sidelined, the tonal confidence wavers. McAvoy gets good performances from his cast, with Ross a boyish yet broken presence as the spiralling Bain, but ultimately the journey is more satisfying than the destination.
In UK and Ireland cinemas now.