#lola campbell

[madeline-kahn]

Dancing in Film: Scrapper (2023) dir. Charlotte Regan

[mariwatchesmovies]

Scrapper (2023) dir. Charlotte Regan

[artfilmfan]

Scrapper (Charlotte Regan, 2023)

cinematography: Molly Manning Walker

[nirbanox]

Scrapper (2023)

Directed by Charlotte Regan

[lostinmac]

Scrapper (2023)

Dir. Charlotte Regan

[mulhollanddriver]

Scrapper - Charlotte Regan (UK 2023) Paris, Texas - Wim Wenders (BRD, FR, UK 1984)

[fieldcinema]

Scrapper, 2023 Dir. Charlotte Regan

[twenty-words-or-less]

Scrapper (2023)

Summary: Twelve-year-old Georgie (Lola Campbell) lives alone after her mother's death, going to school, stealing bikes with her best mate Ali (Alin Uzun), and fobbing off social services. Her life is disrupted, however, when her father (Harris Dickinson) enters it.

Neat little British drama that deserves wider release. Train station scene sweet, some very funny moments, Campbell an absolute find.

Rating: 4.5/5

Photo credit: BBC

[moviemosaics]

Scrapper

directed by Charlotte Regan, 2023

[chasingshadowsblog]

Review: Scrapper - Don't Stop Imagining

Title: Scrapper Director: Charlotte Regan Writer: Charlotte Regan Cast: Lola Campbell, Harris Dickinson, Alin Uzun, Olivia Brady Year: 2023

It's difficult not to like Scrapper. Light-hearted, warm-hearted and, like its main character, "a proper little weirdo", Scrapper is about the reunion between 12-year-old Georgie and her dad Jason after the death of Georgie's mother. Georgie lives independently, stealing and selling bikes to make money and dodging social services with pre-recorded messages from her "uncle Winston Churchill" until one day, fresh from the Ibizan club scene, Jason reappears climbing over the garden fence and back into Georgie's life. Unwanted and unwelcome, Jason insinuates himself into the house with a frustrating (to Georgie) determination to connect with her.

Through Georgie's point-of-view, these first interactions effectively cast Jason as a villain (and vampire and criminal and mob boss) as his presence threatens her independence; Jason promises to call social services if she doesn't let him stay and yells at her when she tries to go through his phone (it is later revealed that Jason's phone holds an important message from Georgie's mother). This initial impression of Jason is used to great effect especially as it becomes clear to the audience, if not to Georgie, that his attempts at kindness are genuine and well-intentioned if not well-executed. His anger towards her is frustration at her stubborness and the invasion of his privacy not an inherent darkness that's going to rear its head for the rest of the film.

When Jason introduces himself, director Charlotte Regan uses snapshots to show Georgie's initial impression of him. With his bleached hair, weak moustache and tracksuit, Jason arrives looking more like the teenager he was when she was born than a man ready to take on a child; later on, he calls his friends looking to know what's going on in Ibiza and tells Georgie's friend Ali how great it is living with your "boys". He is a stark contrast to the old-beyond-her-years Georgie and she knows it. However, as Georgie's omniscient mother knew well, they are more alike than her daughter might be willing to admit, "It's actually crazy how much she's like you." Georgie begins to soften to Jason when he takes her out for the day to avoid a conflict with one of their neighbours. At the train station, he introduces her to a game that he and her mother used to play, making up stories about the other passengers. Lola Campbell is great in this scene as she avoids Jason's eye and you believe for a second that she's not going to join in, but then can't help herself. As we see in an earlier scene, she enjoys improvising and doing of impressions of people and that is one of those traits that she and Jason share. The biggest break-through comes when they get home and Georgie confesses to Jason that she beat up one of the kids in the estate and is worried about the trouble she's going to get in. Harris Dickinson's performance really peaks in this brief scene, where it is evident in his face that he has absolutely no idea what to do in this situation but tells her that he'll "sort it" anyway. Dickinson's portrayal is consistently tender as Jason does his best with Georgie, but their scenes are, blessedly, never saccharine. He connects with her best by teasing her, "So, does this mean I have to, like, change your nappies and that?" "Why are you not hugging me properly?", a tactic she responds to, and they are on their most even keel when (good-humouredly) bickering with each other, "You can't paint a bloody living room midnight blue." "Well, he disagreed. The man in the shop." "The guy handing out the samples ain't the guy to be listening to, alright?"

As Georgie, Lola Campbell is suitably weird, clever and cheeky; she balances this out in her more emotional scenes with the soft, shy, ducked-head awkwardness of having to begrudgingly admit her feelings to Jason when she's done everything she can to avoid his help. The dynamic between the two is wonderful, especially in the moments Georgie lets herself relax around him, and culminates towards the end when she admits that she needs him. Here, Georgie finds Jason playing five-a-side football with Ali and some other kids. He admits to her that he "couldn't face" telling her about the message from her mother, that he believes she doesn't need him. Jason doesn't suddenly wake up knowing how to be a dad, there are elements of him that are still childish but he really wants to try, "…I know that there is a part of you that wants to love her and there's a part of her that wants to love you, too." Georgie hears the truth in her mother's message and, unlike Jason, has the emotional maturity to face it. She comes to the realisation that while she doesn't need him to replace her mum (what she thought he was trying to do), she does need him in other ways. She explains this to him, giving him room to accept a different kind of role. To make mistakes but also to keep trying, "I'm gonna mess up a lot, though." "So will I." Then she gives out to him for not cleaning up after himself, "You need to start cleaning up after yourself. I'm fed up of cleaning up for you." "I am cleaning up after me!"

As a directorial debut, Scrapper is its own self and brave in its weirdness. Regan uses imaginative schticks, such as Georgie and Ali giving personalities to the spiders in her house that are visualised in 8-bit graphics, to give insight into Georgie's life and character. Perhaps the most distinctive risk taken, and one that I don't believe works as well as anything else the film does, is the portrayal of Georgie's grief through the structure she hides in her mother's bedroom. So little is given away in these scenes in anticipation of revealing it later on, that we almost forget about it - and Regan appears to as well. No mention is made of the structure after Jason uncovers it and Georgie is never allowed to vent her grief to him through it. And that's fine, in a way, because she effectively does so in so many other ways; at the beginning of the film she won't let Ali move a cushion on the couch because they're set up the way her mother kept them, then, in the last scene, she and Jason paint the living room a different colour. At the same time it seems like the structure and Georgie's plans for it are going to have more weight in the film that they don't end up having, so, better to do without it. It's a small issue in an otherwise brilliant debut film and Regan's willingness to be weird is a breath of fresh air, as is Lola Campbell's performance. Scrapper isn't a complex movie - it doesn't want you to decide whether or not Jason is a good father for example - but it isn't trying to be either. It is a special, spirited, often cartoonish yet sincerely heartfelt and tender film about letting people into your life and not holding the messes against them. Watch Scrapper and try to keep the smile from your face.

Other bits:

Ali climbing out of washing machine: "It is mad comfy in there."

I love Alin Uzun's delivery of "I'm just… gonna go on my evening walk."

I haven't heard or read anywhere that Lola Campbell and Harris Dickinson improv-ed any of their scenes but their bickering is so natural I wouldn't be surprised if they did, their dynamic is brilliant

"Typical! Typical Sandra!" the imitations scene is so good!

"So rude, the pair of them, and when they're together it's worse. It's the worst!"

"That idiot Jason, he took my bike. He said he was going to nick it and it's been two weeks now and he still hasn't given it back." - I just really like this line, the idea that Jason told the kid straight-up that he was going to steal the bike

"You disgust me sometimes." "I disgust you?" "Yeah, with your language." "What did I say?" "Your fall language." "My 'fall' language?"

Director of photography is Molly Manning-Walker whose film I've not seen but will at some point (How to Have Sex)

Props to Regan for the use of 17 by Youth Lagoon in the credits

[harris-only]

New interview clip for Scrapper

Posted by AP Entertainment

[20yearsofmovies]

Time 14-Aug-2023 19:30 Day Monday Where Cineworld - Rushden Lakes Screen 7 Seat J14 Price £2.43

[filmforager]

Scrapper: Review

The Kid is (not) Alright

In last year’s Aftersun, the tender relationship between a young father and his daughter was played out against the backdrop of a memorable summer holiday. Swapping sunny Turkey for not-so-sunny East London, Scrapper explores similar themes, but is somehow 10 times as vibrant. Seen through the eyes of a 12-year-old girl, this is a bouncy and colourful film with a touching story just below the surface.

Our protagonist is Georgie (a stunning debut performance from Lola Campbell), a spirited young girl who steps up to look after herself after her mum passes away. Together with best friend Ali (a scene-stealing Alin Uzin), Georgie steals bikes to sell for parts, and evades social workers who believe she’s in the care of an ‘Uncle Winston Churchill’. However, Georgie’s world is disrupted when her long absent father (Harris Dickinson), mysteriously reappears to look after her.

As you might expect, this doesn’t go down too well, as Georgie gives a cold shoulder to the man who left her and mum high and dry. From writer-director Charlotte Regan, this explores what would happen when two people not so good at expressing their feelings are forced to co-exist. While he never speaks about his reasons for returning from his new life in Ibiza, she keeps her grieving bottled up so the world can’t see it.

Like its main character, this hides a well of emotions behind a bubbly exterior. This isn’t just a typical story where two people realize that, hey, they might be more similar than they originally thought (although there is a bit of that). Instead, it’s punctuated by dreamlike narrative flourishes and moments of magical realism, including a dazzling moment where Georgie and Ali imagine what her father does for a living, or a trippy sequence involving talking spiders. It’s all visually stunning, with a pastel color palette and a striking variety of shots that manages to turn a disused warehouse into a fairytale setting.

Not all of its ideas work - a few whimsical mock interviews involving Georgie’s schoolmates and teachers are amusing to begin with, but don’t really add anything to the plot. But Scrapper is powered by such fun and wacky energy that you’ll barely have time to realize. It helps that the cast is a joy to be around, with chemistry that feels like dynamite - just watch that hilarious scene where Dickinson and Campbell narrate the lives of two complete strangers. Dickinson is brilliant as a wacky dad who Georgie notes is more childlike than she is, with a natural charisma that slowly works away at her defenses. But the standout performer is Campbell, a naturally funny ball of energy who carries the film’s more vulnerable moments on her capable shoulders. 

Featuring sparky debuts from Campbell and Regan, Scrapper is an inventive, funny and moving story about love and loss, told with all the exuberance of childhood. 

★★★★

[bob-the-movie-man-film-reviews]

Scrapper (12): Of childhood grief, bike theft and talking spiders.

#onemannsmovies #filmreview of "#Scrapper". A novel and funny look at childhood grief but with an uplifting ending. Out on Friday. 3.5/5.

A One Mann’s Movies review of “Scrapper” (2023). Seen as a Cineworld ‘Secret Cinema’ event (where you don’t know what the film will be before it starts) “Scrapper” is the debut from writer/director Charlotte Regan. Looking at the feedback from that screening, it is clearly a “marmite” film, with some loving it and some hating it. I found it brilliant in places but frustratingly lacking in…

[milliondollarbaby87]

Scrapper (2023) Review

Having to deal with the death of her mother, 12 year old Georgie has been living alone in her London flat and covering it up but when her father Jason arrives everything is about to change. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Continue reading Untitled

[stuff-diary]

Scrapper

Movies watched in 2025

Scrapper (2023, UK)

Director & Writer: Charlotte Regan

Mini-review:

It's impressive that this is a directorial debut, cause it has so much personality and energy. It's a bit messy, yes, but that suits the characters and their situation. And in just 80 minutes, it manages to say a lot of interesting stuff about grief, too. It's also pretty fun to see the development in the central father-daughter relationship, which does not go as smoothly as one could expect from that poster. Harris Dickinson is always good, but the real stars here are Lola Campbell and Alin Uzun, with their natural spark and friendly chemistry. It's not like Scrapper will change the world, but it's certainly a great start for director Charlotte Regan and the young cast.