This is an amazing example of a famous actor making his directorial debut but then completely stealing the film from under the feet of its two young leads. James McAvoy’s presence as a bloodcurdling record label boss injects a sense of hair-trigger violence into this otherwise featherlight tale of two aspirant Scottish rappers who decide to feign American accents as a way to fast-track their success. This is a dramatised version of Jeanie Finlay’s 2013 doc, The Great Hip Hop Hoax, focusing on two lovable bozos, Billy Boyd (Samuel Bottomley) and Gavin Bain (Séamus McLean Ross), aka Silibil N’ Brains, as they ride a sudden wave of minor success with a view to eventually holding a mirror up to the cultural xenophobia endemic within the music industry.
From scraping a living as call-centre stooges to sharing a stage with the Eminem-affiliated D12, they experience a stratospheric rise that always teeters on the edge of unlikeliness, and McAvoy too often rests on the fact that because it’s based on true events, he doesn’t need to strain to make things feel authentic. Bottomley and Ross are appealing leads, with the latter in particular making a convincing transition from puppyish introvert to fame-fixated monster. And there’s an interesting metaphor here for McAvoy’s own career as a Scottish man who earns a crust by perfecting a range of accents and character types. Yet its feelgood arc is all a little predictable and soft-edged.
