We fell hard for “The Scouting Book For Boys,” when we saw it at the London Film Festival towards the end of last year. Written by playwright Jack Thorne, who’s a writer on the popular British TV teen soap opera “Skins,” (think Degrassi but with way more sex and drugs) and directed by newcomer Tom Harper, it came out of nowhere to prove itself a truly original piece of work, and easily one of our highlights of last year.
With the UK release a couple of months off (March 19th), a trailer’s come online, and it actually does a pretty good job of representing the movie. We were worried that the distributors might try and pull a bait-and-switch, because it’s not an easy film to market, but this is a fair representation that still manages to intrigue.
“The Scouting Book for Boys” follows the relationship between teenagers David (Thomas Turgoose, from “This is England”) and Emily (Holliday Grainger), who have grown up as best friends in a holiday camp in Norfolk. When Emily discovers that her father has won custody of her, which would take her away from the camp, she runs away, letting only David know where she’s hiding out. As panic grows over her whereabouts, David discovers that there’s darker reasons for her shutting herself off from the world. Susan Lynch (“From Hell”), Stephen Mackintosh (“Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels”) and Rafe Spall (“Hot Fuzz”) are also in the cast. There’s no word on US distribution yet, but we sincerely hope it gets picked up, and that any UK readers will make a trip to see it come March 19th.